Andreas' voice was rising. 'What the hell are you trying to tell me?'
Tassos didn't answer. He simply pulled at a timber about five feet back from the edge of the hole. It looked it was holding up the roof — not a timber you'd want to move.
Andreas instinctively looked up. That's when he saw a huge plank coming toward him. It was part of the ceiling spanning the chasm, but it wasn't falling; it was slowly descending, suspended by ropes at each corner. The near end rested at his feet precisely within the impressions in the dirt.
'Amazing,' said Andreas.
Tassos spoke like a teacher delivering a lecture he'd given a hundred times before. 'Actually, this sort of thing wasn't all that rare on the islands in ancient times.' He paused as if considering whether to continue. 'Every island built secret tunnels to hide from pirates and invaders. Sometimes, an earthquake created an underground abyss — such as this one — across a tunnel. The ancients took it as a sign that the gods would protect them if they reached the other side. Trouble was, a permanent bridge made it easy for their enemies to reach it, too.' He pointed to the timber he'd pulled. 'Ingenious how they did it. The timber secures the whole system in place. It works sort of like a castle's drawbridge, except this bridge drops straight down.'
'This can't be that old,' said Andreas.
'It isn't,' said Tassos, who no longer showed any reluctance to speak. 'Whatever caused this hole happened after the mine was built, and this setup uses modern ratchets, weights, and pulleys to lower and raise the plank. The timber keeps the ratchet from allowing the plank to move.' He pointed to the other side. 'I'll bet somewhere over there's a ratchet for moving the plank from that side. My guess is this was built by our killer — he knew what he was doing.'
Andreas didn't feel like complimenting the killer, no matter how obvious his skills. 'It's time to get over there.'
Tassos gave a slightly nervous look over the edge. 'Heights aren't my thing. After you, Chief.'
Andreas patted him on the back and winked, then briskly crossed over the plank. 'Just keep your eyes shut.' He was beginning to sound like himself again.
Tassos let the three officers cross before slowly inching himself along the plank, shuffling — not lifting — his feet to the other side. He started breathing again when he stepped onto solid ground. The others were fifteen feet ahead staring at a mound of debris blocking their way. It looked impassable. 'A little labyrinth, I see,' said Tassos.
Andreas pointed at the tire tracks. 'And here's Ariadne's cord to lead us through it,' he said, just to let Tassos know there were a few things he too knew about ancient Greece and its myths.
Tassos grumbled, 'Yeah, and maybe at the other end we'll get lucky and find Theseus ready to slay our version of his youth-devouring Minotaur.'
Andreas decided to leave Tassos with the last word on that subject.
They followed the tracks and fifteen minutes later were standing with the men who found the cell. Each swore none of them had gone inside. Andreas stood at the door and stared at the mound of blond hair in the middle of the floor. Near it was a bag, a beach tote. Andreas tried not to think of what she had been through — and was going through. He just wanted to catch the bastard before… He noticed a puddle on the floor and carefully stepped into the cell. He knelt down and examined the liquid. 'I think we have some blood here, Tassos.'
'It's probably his, from that slide down the hill,' said Tassos as he stepped over to the bag. 'At least now we have DNA to work with.'
Andreas stood up. 'Pretty sloppy of him, wouldn't you say?'
'Probably had to leave in a hurry.' Tassos was carefully probing around inside the bag with his flashlight.
'Just what I was thinking.' Andreas yelled to one of his men to get forensics here ASAP.
'Look at this,' said Tassos. 'It's a regular drugstore in here.'
Andreas crouched back down to look in the bag. 'Bet it's crystal meth in that one.' He pointed to a vial. 'And the syringes over there are how he delivered it.'
'Yeah, and next to them is all the equipment you'd need to cook up a shot.' Tassos pushed the light around a bit more. 'I can't tell what's in those other vials, but the pills in the bubble packaging — they're roofies. Our friend Panos' favorites.'
'And that?' asked Andreas, pointing.
Tassos poked at the item with his flashlight. 'An eyebrow pencil.'
'First he shaves them, then paints them? I can't figure him out.' He shook his head and started to stand. As he did his eyes caught a glimpse of the ceiling. He froze. 'Tassos, look.'
For a moment neither said a word. They just stared at the ceiling.
Ringed around the outside of a circle containing four groups of tiny, roughly drawn figures were six carefully painted images. Each image in harmony with the others and posed as if ascending from hell to heaven.
'My God,' said Andreas pointing. 'Those four are images of saints from the churches where the bodies were found!' Instinctively, he crossed himself.
'And those figures in the middle.' Now Tassos pointed. 'They look like… like blonds with wings.'
'Someone's idea of angels I'd guess… or nymphs,' said a somber-sounding Andreas. 'And if I'm counting correctly, the figures grouped next to each saint correspond to the number of bodies buried in its church — including one for the Scandinavian under Saint Marina.'
'He's keeping score?' Tassos' voice cracked.
Andreas looked down, paused, and let out a breath. 'What about the two other images? I don't recognize them.'
'I do.' Tassos looked down. 'One is Serapis, the ancient god who ruled the underworld, the other is Anubis, the guardian of entrance into the underworld — and who some worshipped as the god of embalming and protector of the mummies.'
'He thinks he's binding them like mummies? What the hell is going through this guy's mind?' Andreas spoke without emotion and without looking up.
'I have no fucking idea.' Tassos shook his head and looked at Andreas. 'What do you think, is the artist our guy?'
Andreas stared back at the ceiling. 'I don't know. It doesn't look like his style. More like someone imitating old icon paintings — and the drawings are just scribbled on.'
'Yeah, but whoever did this had talent.'
Andreas headed to the door. 'Time to stop this bastard from making any more drawings.'
Tassos followed.
Andreas waved and smiled to the three searchers as he stepped back into the tunnel. 'Good work, guys.'
'Thanks,' said the oldest.
'Did you see or hear anything after you found the room?' Andreas asked.
They all indicated no.
Andreas turned to Tassos. 'Why the hell the motorbike, and where's it now?' He aimed his flashlight down the tunnel at the tracks. Both the light and tracks disappeared into darkness past the first tunnel entrance.
The only sound was a hum from the generator.
'Uhh, Chief, I might have heard something.' It was the youngest and he sounded nervous. His voice was cracking. 'When we got here and saw the… uhh… hair, they' — he gestured at the other two — 'ran up that way to get the walkie-talkie to work.' He pointed toward the entrance Andreas had used. 'I was scared being here alone, and started singing to myself.' He took a deep breath. 'I didn't even think about it until you said "motorbike," but I might have heard a motor. Down there.' He pointed toward the second tunnel entrance. 'It was very faint, and I didn't hear it very long. I told myself it must have been the generator.'
Andreas turned to his two remaining officers. 'Follow those tracks — and be careful.' To Tassos he said, 'That's why he got the bike, to get her out of here. Damn it, we just missed him.' He kicked the dirt.
A pebble ricocheted off the cell wall and landed next to a small, broken ceramic urn lying against the opposite tunnel wall. Andreas turned his light on the urn and said, 'Why the hell is that here?' He started toward it.
Tassos stopped him. 'Let's get these men out of here. Forensics will take care of this. We'v
e got him on the run, and we'll find him from his DNA.'
Andreas looked at Tassos. 'He must know that too. He might just dump her and take off.'
'The good news is he hasn't. Yet.'
Andreas nodded. 'You're right. Just hope he sticks to his craziness. Okay, let's get out of here and over to where that second tunnel comes out.' He had no time now for old pottery.
As soon as they were outside, Andreas gave orders to tell the men watching the churches that their suspect — whoever he was — was on the move with the missing woman.
The question was, to where?
20
Catia's plane to Mykonos landed on schedule. That seemed like the last thing to go right. At the town hall she learned that neither the mayor nor the chief of police was anywhere to be found, and when she called her brother for help, he too was unavailable.
She raged across the harbor front to the taxi stand, jumped into a cab ahead of two waiting tourists, and told the driver to take her to the hotel where her niece was staying. The driver started to object, but she cursed him in Greek and he said, 'Okay, okay.'
Fuming, she started venting aloud. 'No one in this town is where they're supposed to be. I'm here to meet with your wonderful mayor, and he's gone. I try to see your chief of police, he's gone. I fly all the way from Holland, and neither of them bothers to show up for our appointments.' She really didn't have appointments, but it gave better currency to her anger.
Tentatively, the driver said, 'I'm not a big fan of the mayor and, as for police, they give taxi drivers grief, but I wouldn't take this personally. They're busy, very busy. The whole island's filled with cops — they're looking for a missing girl.'
Catia shivered for an instant, shut her eyes, and took a deep breath. Her brother really did use his influence. She'd underestimated him. Her voice was its old courteous self. 'Have you any news of how the search is going?'
His eyes darted between the mirror and the road. 'Just that they're searching the old mines and a lot of churches.'
Catia was puzzled. 'Why are they looking there?'
The driver was concentrating on crossing a very dangerous intersection. 'I don't know about the mines but I guess the churches because that's where they found another woman's body.'
Catia thought she was going to faint. She couldn't seem to breathe. When she finally spoke, her hands were shaking and her voice was very weak. 'Please… please take me there.'
'Where?'
She spoke between drawing nervous breaths. 'Where they're looking for my daughter.'
The driver jerked his head around, his eyes seeming to swell in their sockets. 'Your daughter?' He crossed himself.
She simply nodded and didn't speak or lift her head for the rest of the ride. Even in a four-wheel-drive SUV Andreas almost slid off the road twice. Tassos yelled what the two cops in the back had to be thinking: 'Slow down before you kill us!' They were on the beat-up, mountain dirt road that ran past the church where they'd found the Vandrew woman's body.
Andreas wasn't listening. 'Son of a bitch is just too lucky. Can't believe he got away from us back there.'
'If you keep driving like this there won't be anyone left to catch him.' Tassos had his hand braced against the roof. The SUV was careening back and forth maddeningly close to the edge every time it hit one of the deep ruts cutting across the road.
About a quarter-mile past the church the road turned to the right and plateaued for about thirty yards before starting downhill. Andreas slowed down slightly and pointed across his body with his right hand. 'Over there, see, that's where the tunnel comes out, down on the other side of that hill.' It was about a half-mile away, another brown hillside flecked with green and gray.
Andreas knew he had to drive faster if there was any chance of catching them. He drove the motorbike onto the crumbling, rusting pier. There was no choice. The police would be there any minute, he was sure of it. His eyes scanned the cove and its ridges for any sign of them — or anyone else. It was, as usual, gray and deserted everywhere he looked. Gray from the color of the barite once loaded onto ships from this spot and deserted because of its ugliness. Even Boy Scouts from their camp in the cove just to the west never hiked here. Too much beauty elsewhere to bother with this place. That's why he chose to hide the boat here last night. It was a gray, medium-sized Zodiac inflatable — a common summer sight in the Aegean.
He put the girl down on the pier next to a rope tied to the Zodiac and pulled on the line until the front of the boat was close enough to slide her onto the bow locker. She slumped forward, obviously still out of it — despite forty-five minutes of bouncing along with him on the motorbike through the tunnel's maze of debris. He'd built the maze and other, more menacing surprises, to discourage the curious from his business inside — such as moats and dens baited with food for attracting feral dogs. They'd worked — at least until today.
He knew his DNA would be all over the tunnel, but that was only part of what police would find to tie it all to him. One of them, at least, would piece it together.
He pushed the motorbike to the end of the pier but hesitated before letting it fall. Maybe he should tie her to it and dump them both? Why wait any longer?
He stood perfectly still holding the bike, then abruptly opened his fingers and watched it fall into the sea. No, it wasn't yet time.
He got into the boat, undid the line, and started the engine. Annika was in front of him, lying on her belly with her head turned forward at the windiest part of the boat. He couldn't see her face but would be able to tell if she moved.
As he headed east out of the cove he kept looking back to shore, expecting any moment to see the police. They were less than a quarter-mile away when Andreas sped into a blind, descending, right-hand curve. Just beyond his line of sight the right wheels hit another deep rut, but this one ran parallel to the road — not across it — and channeled the SUV's wheels as if set on tracks. Andreas jammed on the brakes and twisted the steering wheel hard to the left — the perfect scenario for a rollover. But it didn't roll over because the rut wouldn't let go, and no matter how hard Andreas braked or steered, the SUV kept sliding head-on into — or over — the hillside, depending on where the rut took them.
The killer wasn't the only lucky bastard that afternoon. At least that's what Tassos was calling him when the SUV finally stopped. They'd hit the hillside, but only hard enough to be bruised.
Andreas jumped out and looked at the damage. 'It's not that bad. We can push it back onto the road.'
'Only if I drive,' said Tassos.
Andreas was angry only with himself, but his tone didn't show it. 'This is serious, we have to get there now.'
'I know, that's why I'm driving,' Tassos repeated.
Andreas didn't object, just gestured for the others to help push. It took five minutes before they sufficiently untangled and dug out the mess around the front wheels to get the SUV back on the road. It took another five minutes of careful driving by Tassos — and cursing by Andreas to go faster — before they reached an utterly impassable road. The cove they wanted was at the end of it. Tassos turned off the engine. 'The rest of the way's on foot.'
'If he came this way, we'd have seen him,' said one of the cops.
'Unless he was able to make it back to the main road and swing east before we got here,' said Tassos.
'He'd have to be on a motorcycle to do that,' said the same cop.
Andreas gave him a sarcastic look and started running toward the cove. 'Stop all this bullshit and let's get down there.'
They'd parked just west of a cluster of deserted, one-story, gray concrete-slab buildings. About 150 feet to the west, on an adjacent hillside, was a mine-shaft entrance covered over with weather-battered boards and warning signs marked DANGER. Everywhere and everything was gray. The place looked abandoned to ghosts.
Tassos was moving more like a scurrying duck than a runner. 'That was the mining company's offices.' He pointed to the buildings. 'Looks sort of like someone nuk
ed the place, doesn't it?'
The road was utterly unusable, so Andreas and the two younger cops led the way traversing the hillside, more sliding than running. They came to a narrow plateau covered with thousands of spent shotgun shells and pieces of broken black and blaze-orange ceramic. They kept running but Andreas yelled back to Tassos, 'What the hell is this?'
Tassos was panting. 'It's where locals do skeet and trap shooting' — he caught a breath — 'practicing for bird and rabbit hunting.' Again he paused. 'It's the only place deserted enough not to worry about hitting tourists sunbathing in the bushes.'
Just beyond the shooting range they met back up with the road and followed it for a few hundred feet between two hillsides. It looked like it was about to end at a cliff falling off into the sea. Instead, at the very edge of the cliff the road made an unexpected hairpin turn back onto the hill to the right and ran a steep two hundred yards straight down to the cove. Andreas stopped at the turn. You could see it all from there: the mine entrance, the beach, the pier, the sea.
'Looks like we're late again,' said Andreas.
'Maybe he's not here yet. Maybe he's still in the mine,' said one cop.
Andreas pointed to motorcycle tracks running from the mine to the pier. 'Maybe, but I doubt it.'
Tassos finally caught up to them. 'Looks to be something yellow in the water at the end of the pier.'
Andreas looked. 'I'll take the men down for a look around. Why don't you stay here and watch our backs for anyone who might come along.'
Tassos smiled. 'Thanks. I wasn't looking forward to hiking down there and back.'
Andreas winked and started down. The sunlight was blinding. Annika's eyes weren't used to it. She could sense the sea. Everything was moving faster now, not just jolts and vibration like before. She could feel the breeze growing stronger. Her face was right into the wind, but hard as she tried, she couldn't smell it, couldn't breathe through her nose. She tried to taste it. It was whipping its way between her lips, forcing her to breathe more deeply. It wasn't hard for Andreas to guess that whoever came out of the mine had been riding the motorbike now lying off the end of the pier; but where did he — hopefully they — go? The logical explanation was a boat, but that meant the killer had one waiting for him. Did that mean an accomplice? Maybe they'd walked to another car or bike nearby?
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