Innocents Lost

by Michael McBride

  A dog barked, and several more joined the raucous chorus.

  Dark shapes appeared in windows before vanishing again.

  A stooped old man hobbled slowly across the mouth of the path on the sidewalk of the street beyond.

  Only the leaves fluttered on the breeze.

  Nothing else moved.

  Preston’s shoulders slumped and his arms fell to his sides.

  He was certain he had seen someone, if only for a split-second.

  Holstering his weapon, he walked deeper into the clearing to beat the bushes and confirm what his eyes already insisted.

  There was no one else out there.

  V

  22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

  They had called nine-one-one the moment the first cell phone picked up a signal. A police officer had been waiting at the base of the trail when they arrived.

  Les Grant now sat in the passenger seat of a Fremont County Sheriff’s Department Blazer at the foot of the trailhead, his laptop open on his thighs. A matching SUV idled next to him. Two Lander Police Department cruisers were parked behind him to block off access to the road, cherries twirling, staining the night in alternating shades of red and blue. A white van stenciled with the letters ERT barred access to the path. The Emergency Response Team had already unloaded a handful of forensics techs, their packs brimming with gear to collect evidence. His Subaru Forester had been temporarily impounded while experts sifted through every last microscopic fiber in search of anything incriminating. He supposed he should have been angry, but he knew they would find nothing and return it to him in short measure. At least after taking statements from his students, who all showed various signs of shock, one of the policemen had driven them down the mountain to the nearest hospital for a full medical examination. First thing in the morning, Les would call the university and arrange for their transportation back to Laramie.

  Considering he was the one who had brought them all here, and it was he who discovered the remains entombed in the cairn, the authorities had requested his continued presence until whatever questions arose were answered to their satisfaction. He felt as though he’d been sequestered to this car for hours already.

  The initial email containing the pictures of the site had been sent to a general university email address, and from there routed to the College of Arts and Sciences, then to the Anthropology Department, before finally finding its way into his personal account. The brain trust at the Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory was already hard at work following the cyber-trail, but so far had been unable to produce more than an IP address that corresponded to a public internet terminal at the Laramie County Library in Cheyenne.

  Whoever had sent it had wanted this site to be found, and by someone other than the police first, someone with enough anthropological knowledge to recognize the medicine wheel and its potential significance. He couldn’t help but wonder why. And more importantly, why him, or had he simply been the unlucky recipient?

  He watched the congregation of law enforcement officers gathered around the hood of the adjacent Blazer through the window. They pored over a series of maps detailing everything from elevation to the most recent satellite images while they gave the ERT crew a head start to gather whatever evidence they might be able to find before the entire circus descended upon the medicine wheel.

  While he waited, Les used the time to seek answers to the questions that gnawed at the back of his mind.

  He resumed his internet search. Thus far, he had only been able to confirm what he already knew. There were more than seventy documented medicine wheels throughout Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, which contained the greatest concentration. They were designed as “horizon calendars” to monitor and predict specific celestial events that coincided with important days of the year. Most had twenty-eight spokes to correspond with the lunar calendar. The cairns were placed in such a way that when looking from one to another at various points across the circle, certain stars would rise on the appropriate dates. He had never studied petroform astronomy in any depth, but he did understand the concept of using stars to chart the solstice. The helical rising of the star Fomalhaut signaled the commencement of a twenty-eight day countdown to the summer solstice, toward the end of which Aldebaran would rise, two days prior to the event. Rigel would rise twenty-eight days after that, and Sirius another four weeks later to mark the end of summer. Other cairns would be aligned to provide a direct line of sight into the rising and setting sun on the day of the solstice. Was it possible that this medicine wheel had been built to the precise standards Native Americans had used eight hundred years ago? If so, Aldebaran already made its debut on the horizon last night. And what did the skeletal remains and the DVD have to do with anything? Obviously, such recording devices were unavailable so many years ago, and although the more ancient medicine wheels had similar cairns, there was no historical record of the discovery of corpses inside of them.

  And there was something else troubling him. The trees. What could have caused the pines and aspens in the immediate vicinity of the clearing to grow in a corkscrew fashion? There was a species of willow that commonly grew in a spiral manner, but very little regarding the mutation in other indigenous species. Similar groves had been discovered in Saskatchewan, northwest of the town of Hafford, which, coincidentally, was not far from the location of a smaller medicine wheel. Other instances were reported outside of Sedona, Arizona, where the odd growth patterns were attributed to mystical energy vortices that drew thousands of pilgrims every year. These spiraling vortices were claimed to induce a preternatural sense of well-being and feelings of rejuvenation in anyone who stood within range. It smacked of New Age mumbo-jumbo to Les.

  A knock on the window startled him from his research.

  He looked up to see the broad-shouldered, crew-cut sheriff with the granite jaw that had ushered him into the vehicle. Dandridge, if he remembered correctly.

  Les closed his laptop, tucked it under his arm, and opened the door. He stepped down from the passenger seat into a small crowd. He’d already been introduced to Lander Police Officers Carnahan and Wilcox with their blue uniforms, during the first wave of interrogations, and Fremont County Sheriff’s Department Deputies Henson and Miller in their matching brown jackets, during the second.

  “Deputy Henson will be taking you down to Lander, where we’ve arranged for accommodations in a motel for you and your students,” Dandridge said.

  The expression of disappointment on the deputy’s face suggested he’d drawn the short straw.

  “And from there?” Les asked.

  “Once we’ve examined the crime scene and you’ve answered whatever questions we might come up with, you will be free to leave,” Dandridge said. And as an afterthought, “We do apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “Come with me, Dr. Grant,” Henson said. The deputy guided Les by the elbow toward the waiting cruiser.

  Henson paused in front of the two doors on the passenger side, a moment of indecision that spoke volumes about how the authorities perceived Les, before finally opening the front door and ushering him inside.

  He watched through the front windshield in the red and blue glare as the remaining four men started up the path into the wilderness. Tires kicked gravel up against the undercarriage as they began the return trip to civilization.

  The impromptu parking lot at the base of the path fell away behind him in the side mirror, but Les couldn’t shake the feeling that this wouldn’t be the last time he saw this section of the forest.

  VI

  Evergreen, Colorado

  Preston rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. A swatch of moonlight stretched across the angled ceiling from the gap above the curtains, creating an elongated X-shaped shadow from the ceiling fan, which turned slowly at the urging of a gentle breeze only it could feel. He had collapsed fully clothed on top of the bedspread several hours earlier, and while
he was physically spent, his mind was far from exhausted. No matter how hard he tried, there would be no respite of sleep for him this night. After all, if his theory was correct, the man who had taken his daughter only had one night left to strike again before the summer solstice.

  He thought about the intruder he was certain he had seen in his yard. Was it possible it was the same man he had been chasing for the last six years? And if so, why had the man chosen to reveal himself to him at this juncture? And where had he gone? There was no way that old guy could have sprinted across the field in the time it had taken Preston to pass through the juniper hedge. So where in the world had the man been hiding? Or, as Preston was reticent to contemplate, had he even truly been there at all? There had been no footprints or other signs of trespass to warrant calling for further investigation, and even if he had called it in, without any kind of empirical evidence, they would have dismissed his claims out-of-hand. Especially today.

  With a sigh, he flopped over onto his side and faced the clock. 11:57 PM. He wanted nothing more than for this day to finally end. However, the prospect of facing another year like the previous six made him sick to his stomach.

  The time changed to 11:58.

  He crawled over the edge of the bed and headed out of the bedroom he had shared with his wife, down the hallway, and into the kitchen where the Maalox waited. After several gulps straight from the bottle, he opened the refrigerator. It contained only the remnants of a twelve-pack of Budweiser and take-out containers filled with partially consumed meals, fuzzy with mold. The last thing he needed right now was to further aggravate his digestive system.

  His thoughts turned to the Beretta holstered on his nightstand. How easy would it be to simply open his mouth, press the barrel against his hard palate, and end his suffering?

  “No,” he said out loud, the sound of the lone word startling him in the silence. That bullet was reserved for the man who had ruined his life. Even if it took the rest of his days, he would see the look in the man’s eyes when he jammed the barrel between them. He didn’t need to make the man beg, nor did he care about repentance. He merely wanted to see a spark of recognition before he committed that micro-momentary expression of pain to memory. Only when that mental image grew stale would he turn his pistol upon himself. Until then, he would continue to dog the bastard’s steps, regardless of the physical and emotional toll his obsession exacted.

  He returned to the cupboard, pulled out the Maalox, and set it beside his laptop on the kitchen table.

  “Breakfast of champions,” he said as he sat down at the table and guzzled from the blue plastic container.

  He opened his computer and the screen bloomed to life. His personal case file, which contained everything he could find on his daughter’s abductor, both factual and speculative, was waiting for him. If there was a pattern to the kidnappings, then there had to be a way to predict them. He was just too blind to see it. Twenty-seven children, all of whom fit the same profile, had been stolen from their families in just under seven years, their disappearances equally spaced to correspond with celestial events, and within the coming day, he was sure there would be a twenty-eighth. The first had been an eleven year-old girl named, Sarah Schmaltz. He revisited her file for the thousandth time. What was special about her that had helped to trigger this chain of events? Why hadn’t there been any missing children’s cases that fit this particular modus operandi before her? She was an average-looking child from a middle-class upbringing in Fort Collins, Colorado. As far as he could tell, there was nothing extraordinary about her, but there had to be something he was overlooking, something—

  His laptop chimed. An envelope icon appeared in the bottom corner of the screen, signaling the arrival of a new email.

  The clock on the microwave read midnight on the nose.

  Preston brushed the cursor, aligned the arrow with the envelope, and double-clicked the icon.

  His inbox opened and downloaded the new message. Part of him expected—or maybe just hoped—that it would be from Jessie. Instead, the sender’s name matched his own: Philip Preston. A right-click confirmed the email had originated from his own personal email account, quite possibly from this very laptop. Inside his home. The subject line read simply Twenty-eight.

  He clicked his Sent Items folder, and confirmed that the email had indeed been composed within this very account at 10:03 p.m. and sent using the time-delay function to arrive at midnight.

  A tiny paperclip icon indicated there was an attachment.

  “Son of a bitch,” he whispered.

  His hands trembled as he opened the email.

  He glanced again at the sender’s name, and then at the keyboard over which his fingers were poised like the legs of twin spiders. Had whoever sent the message been sitting right here in this very spot as he did now? He hadn’t heard the slightest sound, and he had only been fifteen feet away.

  The body of the email was composed of three rows of numbers and letters:

  28

  6-21

  S.S.

  And below them was a picture of a darkened room. The faint reflection on the glass indicated it had been taken through a window at night. There was a bed against the far wall, and curled under a tangle of blankets, a small child slept, long blonde bangs crossing her peacefully slumbering features.

  Chapter Two

  June 21st

  I

  22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

  Fremont County Sheriff Keith Dandridge surveyed the site from the edge of the forest. The scene before him was beyond his worst nightmares. In his eleven years in law enforcement, he had been involved in some of the most ghastly cases in the Rocky Mountain region, most notably the Schoolhouse Slaughter in Pine Springs eight years ago. A disgruntled, bipolar teacher named Irving Jepperson had lined up his class of twelve sixth grade students at the front of the room and fired upon them at close range with a shotgun. Four of the children had managed to escape through the window while the custodian and another teacher subdued him. Eight eleven and twelve year-olds had been heaped on the floor at the foot of a chalkboard peppered with buckshot and spattered with blood, bone fragments, and gray matter when he arrived. There had been nothing left of their faces or upper torsos, leaving the parents to identify their children by their blood-soaked clothing and shoes. And somehow, even that carnage paled by comparison to the horror that unfolded before him now, perhaps not in sheer ferocity, but in the palpable evil that emanated from the clearing.

  The amount of planning that had been invested into the creation of this tableau was staggering.

  A ring of halogen lights encircled the wagon wheel design. They provided precious little illumination, and instead cast long shadows from the rock cairns and walls. More lights would have to be airlifted in with a supply of portable generators, but not until they had thoroughly scoured the ground for evidence. They couldn't afford for the rotors of a chopper to blow away even a single footprint, and the nearest other suitable landing area was a mile and a half to the northeast. For now, the ERT crew was gathering whatever they could find and photographing even the smallest stone from every appreciable angle.

  With such an elaborate setup, Dandridge knew they would only discover what the killer wanted them to find. This was no haphazard burial site. An inordinate amount of time and care had gone into designing something meant to be seen.

  This promised to be the longest night of his life.

  "You're going to want to see this," an evidence tech he recognized as Brad Stewart said from his left, where two large piles of stones had been removed from one of the cairns and stacked to either side of it, framing a maw of shadows.

  Dandridge reluctantly approached, accepted the proffered flashlight from Stewart, and shined it into the hollow base of the cairn.

  "At a guess," Stewart said, "I'd wager she was killed roughly two years ago, but we'll have to wait for the ME for a more official assessment."

  "She?"

  "That's our working
assumption. She's still too young and skeletally immature to tell definitively."

  Dandridge crouched and had to cover the lower portion of his face with his handkerchief to combat the stench.

  A handful of flies buzzed lazily at the periphery of the light's reach.

  "For the love of God," Deputy Miller said from behind him. There was a crashing sound in the underbrush, then a retching noise as Miller was absolved of his dinner.

  Dandridge studied the recess with the flashlight. A fully-articulated skeleton had been posed to face the center of the medicine wheel. Its palms had been drawn together and placed against the left side of its skull, its head canted slightly toward them in a twisted mockery of a peacefully sleeping child. There was a depressed fracture slightly anterior to the coronal suture, from which a spider web of cracks expanded. And based upon the size of the bones and the presence of the epiphyseal growth plate lines, he estimated she couldn't have been more than twelve years old. Rusted lengths of barbed wire had been wound around and through the skeleton to hold the remains in place. Tangles of hair and tattered skin still adorned the barbs. Clumps of blackened flesh clung to the bones at random intervals, while the rest had turned the color of rust and were crusted with flaking scales of dried blood. Frayed tendons had retracted and pulled away from their moorings, where the gristle of muscle attachments reminded him of the nubs at the ends of gnawed drumsticks. The cartilaginous joints were ebon and rotted, yet somehow managed to hold the appendages together. Flies crawled on the dirt, which was slimy and lumpy with the foul dissolution of the tissues that had sloughed from the body as it decomposed.

  "All of the teeth are still intact," Dandridge said, sweeping the beam across the small face. "It shouldn't take long to provide a positive ID from dental records."