Leo eased forward to better see between the isolation-gowned men. In addition to the Chief ME, there were three other men. He'd only been introduced to one, another medical examiner who had apparently bathed in aftershave before entering the room. Leo had already forgotten his name.
"Both wounds were inflicted by the same weapon as evidenced by the external characteristics of the soft tissue. No telltale indications of a sharpened edge. No "V" pattern from a blade being twisted or widening of the laceration consistent with rapid retraction. Clean incisions through the latissimus dorsi and erector spinae muscles. The epidermal layer is curled inward with no sign of attempted healing. Superior and lateral sides of the wounds are smooth, the inferior ragged, indicating downward force. No bruising to suggest impact from a hilt or handle. Obviously a rounded implement. Not a knife. Definitely antemortem." He stuck his finger into the wound. "Angled entrance with inferior curvature of roughly thirty degrees. Possibly some kind of hook with a shallow arch."
Leo closed his eyes and struggled to keep from imagining the look on his son's face as someone repeatedly stabbed him in the back with a hook. The doctor's monotonous voice and vivid play-by-play description of his son's injuries faded. He thought about how much pain Hunter must have endured, and it made him sick to his stomach.
The whine of a Stryker saw roused him from his thoughts. Dr. Prentice had finished performing his external inspection and rolled the body onto its back. He had created the Y-incision and reflected the skin from Hunter's chest to expose his sternum and ribs. Prentice used the saw to cut through the lateral sections of the rib cage, and removed the front half as a single unit like the dome of a serving tray to expose the contents of the thoracic cavity.
"The mediastinum is shifted to the right, compressing the right lung against the ribs." The recorder whirred as Prentice poked and prodded with a dull steel implement. "Both lobes of the contralateral lung are contracted and shrunken, a consequence of the tension pneumothorax created by the left dorsal puncture wound."
"Excuse me, Dr. Prentice," the younger man at the head of the table asked. Leo suspected he was a medical student as he hardly looked like he was out of his teens. "If the collapse of the lung was caused by the stab wound, shouldn't it have caused an open pneumothorax, and thus only a mild lateral shift of the esophagus, trachea, and blood vessels?"
"Remember to begin with observation, not speculation. Stick to the known facts. This man's thoracic anatomy reflects a tension pneumothorax, meaning that no air entered the pleural space."
"You're suggesting the water provided the necessary seal to hold the wound closed?"
"I'm not suggesting anything. I'm stating the facts as I can clearly see them. We know from the conjunctival petechiae, the fluid in the sinuses, and the water obviously retained in the tissues in the right lung, that his death was due to asphyxiation, specifically by drowning. He had to breathe the water for it to reach his sinuses and lungs. Look here." Prentice indicated the left lung. "Note the difference in the color and consistency of the lung tissue. The left lung did not retain water like the right, which indicates it was non-functional prior to the fatal aspiration."
"Then he couldn't have been stabbed more than a few seconds before immersion in the river."
"Correct. Otherwise air would have entered the pleural space and created an open pneumothorax."
Leo had heard more than enough. He turned and stormed out of the room.
Someone had stabbed his son in the back and disposed of his body in the river.
Now it was time to do something about it.
V
Glenwood Cemetery
Houston, Texas
October 21st
10:25 a.m. CDT
Marcus Colton passed like a ghost through the somber gathering, a faceless mourner amid the tearful women and stoic men. The day was gray, the branches on the weeping cypress trees brown. Only the manicured lawn and shrubs provided a background of color for the marble and slate headstones and crypts, most of which were draped with moss. A procession of limousines idled at the bottom of the gentle slope, beyond which he could see the hint of Buffalo Bayou. Somewhere nearby was the final resting place of Howard Hughes.
The funeral director stood at the head of the grave on an elevated platform, hands clasped behind his back, bible on the lectern before him. He was in the middle of reciting the standard speech about eternal souls and lives prematurely extinguished. The polished oak casket hovered over the hidden hole beneath it, enclosed by a cage of red velvet ropes.
A woman sobbed to his right and drew several consolatory pats on the shoulder. In the race for sympathy, she trailed only the man sitting in the front row, a man that he knew needed none.
Colton skirted the periphery of the gathering and vanished behind the branches of a cypress. Gearhardt didn't acknowledge his arrival. He just stared straight ahead through his Serengeti sunglasses, his face stripped of all emotion. Only the clenched muscles in his jaws suggested that he was suffering, and not as a symptom of sorrow.
Colton studied the scene as he waited, memorizing faces and attaching names to those he recognized. His dark hair was cropped military short, his acute gray eyes hidden behind black lenses. His suit matched every other. He looked like anyone else, everyone else. Forgettable.
When the funeral director finally finished speaking, Gearhardt rose and cast what appeared to be a snarl of dead weeds onto the casket, ran his fingers along the smooth grain, and walked away from the gathering. He wound a circuitous route through the maze of ornate headstones and joined Colton beneath the sagging branches.
Colton didn't offer his condolences. Empty platitudes changed nothing. Instead, he waited patiently for his sometimes employer to speak. He had done enough jobs for Gearhardt in the past to know how the man worked. Gearhardt was in charge, but he allowed Colton autonomy over the operation itself. It was a rare combination, and Colton respected him all the more for it. Over the course of the past two decades, they had combined for more than a dozen successful reclamation projects, all of which had gone off without a hitch. There were always complications, but Colton was in the business of providing solutions, none of which came cheap. The mere fact that Gearhardt had called him first spoke volumes about the situation.
"I trust you found my offer satisfactory," Gearhardt said.
"As always." Colton allowed the silence to linger between them, interrupted only by the distant din of voices and the whistle of dove wings.
"You have reservations."
"I'm not exactly sure what you expect from me on this one. On the surface, it's a straight locate-and-excavate job, with maybe a few more bureaucratic hoops to jump through to secure the land lease, but when you factor in your boy's death, I have to wonder if the assignment isn't of a more personal nature."
"Have you ever known me to be sentimental in business matters?"
"No."
"Then give me your assessment."
"The Medical Examiner's report clearly states that Hunter's death was by drowning, and while there were two large puncture wounds in his back, they weren't necessarily dealt with the intent to kill. With easy access to guns and machetes, an assault with a hook seems highly unlikely and reflects none of the traits of a crime of passion. If the men you sent with him had wanted him dead, his body would never have been found. Not in that jungle. And his associates were well screened. In my opinion, none of them are capable of the kind of treachery you suspect."
"That kind of wealth can alter anyone's behavior patterns."
"True. However, in this case I find it hard to believe. I've thoroughly reviewed their dossiers and see nothing that would imply the potential for subterfuge, let alone violence."
"Then we're in agreement. They're all dead."
Colton nodded slowly. Gearhardt surprised him with his cool reasoning, especially under the circumstances.
"I've been giving this a lot of thought," Gearhardt said. "Initially, given the sheer amount of money we're d
ealing with here, I suspected some sort of conspiracy. But the more I step back and rationalize the situation, the more I believe that external forces contributed to my son's death, and the probable deaths of the rest of his expedition party."
"What do you propose?"
"I'm not quite sure, which is why I contacted you."
"The location is inherently rife with variables. There are countless species of venomous snakes and insects. That high in the cloud forest, the weather is notoriously unpredictable. They found his body in a seasonal river only after it had receded far enough to strand his body. And then there's the human factor. There are still indigenous tribes hidden in the Andes, isolated groups that might not take too kindly to any unheralded intrusion. And you can't discount the potential involvement of the Peruvian government. If word of your party's destination and what might be hidden there somehow leaked, there could be soldiers crawling all over the site. Then there are diseases we don't even know about yet, and for most we do, there are no inoculations. Any of hundreds of factors could have ultimately contributed to their deaths."
"I understand the overall scenario. I want to know what your gut tells you."
Colton pondered his answer carefully. With so many variables, anything could have happened. The idea of soldiers and natives didn't feel plausible. The Ejército del Perú, the Peruvian Army, would most certainly have mowed them down with automatic weapons and made sure their bodies were never recovered, and with their intimate knowledge of the Amazonas region, the natives would never have allowed the party to reach its goal in the first place if they'd felt threatened. So what was he thinking? Disease? Hunter's body had been cleared of viral and bacterial pathogens by the CDC itself. What did that leave? He hated to vocalize the words that came out of his mouth next, but he could see no other response.
"I don't know."
"And that's what troubles me, too."
Colton paused and watched the mourners disperse from the gravesite and pile into the waiting limousines. The sun peeked through the cloud cover, but vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
"I want to show you something," Gearhardt said. He reached into his jacket pocket, removed a folded handkerchief, and held it in his open palm. "These were with my son's possessions. They found them in his backpack."
Colton accepted the proffered handkerchief and felt the weight of its contents, or rather the lack thereof. He unfolded the fabric and studied the objects for a long moment before he looked up to find Gearhardt staring intently at him.
"I don't get it. Are these supposed to mean something to me?"
"I was hoping they would. They definitely meant something to Hunter, and for whatever reason he thought they were important enough to make sure he packed them in his hurry to flee the camp. We're dealing with a vast wilderness consisting of thousands of square miles of the harshest unmapped and unexplored terrain in the world. They're obviously a clue of some kind, but to what? The location? Or something else?"
Colton inspected the objects a while longer, then refolded the handkerchief over them.
"I have to admit, you've piqued my curiosity. However, it remains to be seen if you truly require the kind of dynamic solutions I provide."
Gearhardt nodded, but Colton sensed his hesitation.
"What are you holding back?" Colton asked. He returned the handkerchief, which disappeared into Gearhardt's pocket again.
"I have two stipulations."
"You know that's not how I work."
"Humor me, Marcus."
Colton licked his lips and tilted his face to the slight breeze. The smell of flowers and turned earth washed over him. There was something in the air, something intangible, something that constricted his intestines and fluttered in his stomach. It was a sensation to which he was entirely unaccustomed. He lowered his eyes to meet Gearhardt's and raised an eyebrow.
"I want this entire expedition documented," Gearhardt said. "Camera crews, various experts, the whole nine yards."
"You do remember that your son was stabbed twice in the back, right?"
"How could I forget?"
"If you want me to babysit a bunch of civilians under potentially dangerous conditions, you're going to have to double your offer. I expect four million and a twenty-percent stake."
"Done."
"And your second condition?"
"I'm going with you."
VI
Turlington Hall
University of Florida
Gainesville, Florida
October 22nd
3:03 p.m. EDT
Dr. Samantha Carson leaned back in her desk chair and sighed. Twin stacks of essay tests dominated the blotter in front of her computer monitor. She should have made the exam multiple choice and keyed the Scantron. That way she would have already been done and sitting comfortably on her couch at home with a glass of wine and the new Danielle Steel novel, her guilty pleasure. Instead, she could only stare at the heaps of paper with their scribbled chicken scratch and dread the daunting task ahead.
Normally, she would have already been cruising through them, but the news of Hunter's death had hit her like a truck. Granted, she'd only seen him a handful of times over the past five years, but they'd practically grown up together. While other children had been firmly rooted in their nuclear families and living normal lives, she and Hunter had been toted around the world by their parents like baggage, which wasn't to say their childhoods had been terrible, only...different. They had lived for months at a time in tents and haphazardly assembled Quonset huts in some of the least hospitable locales, playing in jungles rather than on jungle gyms, in the most remote regions of the world rather than in safe little cul-de-sacs. For a long time it had felt normal. It wasn't until she began to develop her own identity and discovered the need for friends and an actual sense of belonging that she realized what she was missing. Hunter had been a brother to her in every way but genetically. It just hadn't been enough for her, and she had jumped at the opportunity to matriculate at one of the most prestigious private prep schools in the country. Hunter had stayed with his parents, but they had always spent holidays and breaks together, and she had looked forward to every minute of it.
And now he was gone.
Sam had promised herself she would make more of an effort to stay in contact, but since her parents passed---her father from esophageal cancer and her mother from the resultant loneliness of a broken heart---she had buried herself in her work and held life at arm's reach. Her professorship was demanding. As co-chair of the paleoanthropology department, she was charged with securing funding and negotiating site leases in addition to the everyday tasks of teaching undergraduate anthropology and graduate-level studies in Indigenous South American Cultures. Throw in the responsibility of being one of the world's foremost experts on the Chachapoya culture, and it was a rigorous schedule that dominated nearly every free second of her time, which forced out all of the things she had originally abandoned the life her parents had given her to pursue. In the end, as the adage goes, she had become just like them, an isolated relic in the modern world doing everything in her power to live in the past.
Sam turned away from her desk and looked out over the commons. Young men and women with their entire lives ahead of them bustled between classes, milled around bike racks, tossed Frisbees and kicked hacky sacks. Here she was, barely thirty-three years-old with a tenured academic post, a leader in her field, and it saddened her that she couldn't identify with any of them.
There was a knock on her office door, followed by the slight squeak of hinges. It was about time her teaching assistant showed up. There were still the next morning's lesson plans to formalize, and she wanted to discuss a couple of changes in the---
"You look just like your mother." She recognized the voice immediately and whirled to face her visitor. "She had those same little freckles under her eyes."
Leo offered an almost paternal smile. He hovered in the doorway for a few seconds before entering the room and clos
ing the door behind him. He gestured to one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. "May I?"
Sam could only nod. She hadn't seen this face from her childhood in years, and other than a few more wrinkles around his eyes, he didn't appear to have aged at all. After a moment, she noticed her mouth was hanging open and felt the need to say something.
"I'm so sorry to hear about Hunter. You know how much I loved him."
Leo's smile grew weary. "I had always hoped that you two would end up together. You had so much in common, and you made a good team, you know?"
Sam inclined her head and swallowed the lump in her throat. In a practiced motion, she swept her long, raven-black hair behind her ears and studied this specter from her past through deep blue eyes. She felt like a child in his presence, as though in a heartbeat her skirt and blouse had reverted to dirty jeans and a baggy T-shirt.
The last time she saw Leo was following her mother's funeral. She had just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a doctorate in Cognitive Anthropology and Ethnoscience after spending two consecutive summers, and then a full year, excavating the Chachapoya ruins at Kuelap and the Karajia Tombs. Wide-eyed and overflowing with principles, she had lit into him with a ferocious tirade about his practices of raping the sites he discovered, pillaging the heritage of vanished cultures for profit, and stealing natural resources that should rightly belong to the impoverished masses. She had said things she knew she could never take back, and in doing so had tarnished her father's memory as well, but her beliefs hadn't changed one iota in the interim, and she wasn't about to recant.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Leo said, "Perhaps we didn't part on the best of terms last time we spoke, but I hope to make amends. I won't apologize for the life I've led. With your father by my side, we built a financial empire and salvaged lost societies from their own ruins. And we did so by the letter of the law."
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