by Layton Green
Cora rehashed the police report. Grey could tell she was telling the truth by the confusion and terror on her face when she described her father’s condition.
She shivered. “He looked like a hairless monster, with veins like steel cords. And his fingers . . . no pill or bottle causes that.”
“How did he drive home from his fishing trip?”
She gave a harsh laugh. “Drive? My daddy never owned a car. What he did, he walked a mile to the east and dipped his pole in the water. And probably in something else, too.”
Grey realized what was missing in the cul-de-sac. Something that littered the lots of most poor rural communities. Cars. He had only seen one or two. “You don’t think your father recognized you?”
“If so, he sure didn’t show it. He stumbled into the house, smashed a few things, and threw a chair at me. I ran through the back door and the next thing I knew, people was screamin’ and daddy was bleeding out in the street.”
“So you didn’t get to talk to him?”
“He wasn’t in his right mind.”
“The man your father attacked . . . did you know him?”
She waved the hand holding the cigarette. “That was old Brill Johnson, a drifter who made my daddy look like an upstanding citizen.”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
“Try the tracks, or an empty lot.” She smirked and pinched off her cigarette butt. “He don’t trust no one, is crazy as a loon, and stays drunker than a sailor on shore leave.”
“What about a relative?”
“None I know of.”
Grey didn’t hear anything else useful. He thanked Cora for her time and stepped outside. He caught a whiff of burning leaves and noticed a plume of smoke behind one of the houses.
Grey knocked on a few doors to ask about Brill Johnson, but no one had seen him since the night Seb had died.
Frustrated, he was about to leave when he remembered the old woman smoking on the porch beside Cora’s house. As he approached, the woman flicked a fly off her shawl. He introduced himself. “Do you have a second?”
She mashed her lips as if chewing cud. Grey noticed she was toothless. She curled an age-spotted wrist, motioning him forward.
He squatted on the porch to make her feel more comfortable. “I was wondering if you were here the night Seb Thomas died.”
A slow nod. “I seen it.”
Her accent was so thick Grey could barely understand her. “Did you witness the altercation?”
She shook her head.
“What about Brill Johnson?” he asked. “Do you have any idea where I can find him?”
“He gone.”
“Where?”
She cackled. “You the only person ever axed that question.”
Grey rubbed the back of his neck. He was guessing the old woman sat on her porch most of the day. “Have you seen or heard anything unusual in the past week or two?”
“Sumthin,” she said, without hesitation. “A truck came by the day before Seb gone fishin’. Ain’t from ’round here.”
“A truck—do you know what kind?”
“A white one.”
“Pickup?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t suppose you saw the license plate?”
She took a lighter and a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes out of her nightgown. “Nope. But I seen the driver.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Real white like you, red beard, long hair. And he big. Real big.”
“Did he leave his truck?”
She shook her head. “He turn around and drove off. There was no one around but me.”
“Did he see you?”
“No one ever see me.”
Grey’s leg started to cramp. He stood. “What do you think he was doing?”
With a deft flick of her thumb that belied her age, she lit a cigarette. “Looking for trouble.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I old, and know trouble when I see it.”
Odd, Grey thought. It was probably coincidental, but he had nothing else to go on. “How often does something like that happen? A stranger coming to this cul-de-sac?”
She coughed. “A white man? About never.”
“Did you tell the police about this?” he asked.
“No one ever axed me.”
A puff of smoke drifted into Grey’s face. He resisted the urge to wave it away. Before he could ask another question, the old woman said, “I seen sumthin else about him. A tattoo on his arm.”
Grey turned to look at the street. The edge of the cul-de-sac was only twenty feet away, but that was still a long way to see a tattoo.
She noticed his skepticism. “I’m old, but I ain’t blind. He hung his arm out the window when he drove by. Like I says, it was a big arm.”
“What was the tattoo?”
“Some kinda symbol.”
Grey tensed. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence after all. He described the marking found on the boy in South Africa for her. “Was that it?”
“Nope,” she said, then reached into the nightgown again. “Here. I drawed it.”
She unfolded a piece of yellow lined paper, like the one Grey used in school as a kid, and revealed a sketch of two intersecting check marks capped by the top half of a diamond.
It wasn’t the same marking, but Grey recognized it. During his time in Diplomatic Security, he had received training on the symbology of various hate groups around the world. This particular marking was known as “The Rune”. Originally related to the Norse God Odin, the Odal or Othala symbol had been adopted by the Nazi party and other white supremacist movements as a symbol of Aryan heritage.
Grey grimaced and thanked her.
Realizing he was starving, Grey stopped for lunch at the rib shack he had passed. About the size of a railroad car, the restaurant had a counter window to place orders and a few picnic tables scattered around the gravel lot. While he munched on a plate of pulled pork, Grey researched white supremacist groups in the Atlanta area.
Thirty-nine active organizations at last count, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Names like Aryan Nations Worldwide, Supreme White Alliance, Crew 38, League of Dixie, the Blood and Honor Social Club.
Nothing sociable about blood and honor.
After absorbing a few disturbing factoids, such as the KKK rallies atop Stone Mountain and the Georgia high school that held its first integrated prom in 2014, Grey turned to the chat boards. The rhetoric was stomach turning. He didn’t find a particular connection between the Odin rune and any of the hate groups in Georgia, but he did pinpoint a few local bars that seemed to be an epicenter of activity.
Grey picked at his fried okra and then pushed the plate aside. God, how he detested hate groups.
The only upside to the case was that it gave him something else to focus on. An outlet. He finished his sweet tea and considered his next steps.
The meeting with Dr. Genevieve Fischer of the CDC wasn’t until eight-thirty that night. Since he had a few hours to kill, he decided it was time to ask a few questions at the white supremacist hangouts around town.
Whether the esteemed clientele liked it or not.
-5-
WESTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA
As he flew into Cape Town International Airport, Professor Viktor Radek reminisced on his first arrival into what he considered the second most beautiful city in the world.
His hometown, of course, held the title. Nothing beat Prague on a crisp spring morning, watching the spires of Old Town emerge out of the fog. If anything truly mysterious lived in the world, then surely it kept a townhome in Prague.
The Western Cape was a stark contrast. Vast and open-skied, Viktor remembered absorbing the landscape as an impressionable teen on holiday with his parents, chewing on biltong as he marveled at fynbos-draped valleys and mythical rock formations and sunsets like supernovas.
And Cape Town itself: the dreamy fusion of land and sky and sea, nature and
city, mist and earth. The city possessed an effortless cool, a supermodel since birth.
Yet appearances could be deceiving. Viktor would never forget sitting in the back of a limousine with his parents, on the way into Cape Town from the airport, eyes wide as they drove past the worst slums he had ever seen. A son of privilege seeing the harsh inequalities of the world for the first time.
South Africa, he remembered thinking, was free will in all its terrible glory.
Flash forward forty years, and Viktor was sad to be skipping Cape Town and taking the N2 straight from the airport to Bonniecombe, a small town nestled at the feet of the Langeberg Mountains. It was there, in one of the impoverished townships that provided cheap labor to the wine estates, that the Xhosa boy had returned from the grave.
Again Viktor considered the meaning of the strange tattoo. The double helix was clearly a scientific reference of some sort. An odd companion to the squiggly path and pointed tip of the unalome, a symbol of sacred geometry in the yantras of Buddhism.
Symbolic, perhaps, of the intersection of mysticism with reason? Science with faith?
The number thirteen was a wild card. Though viewed as an ominous integer by Western culture and usually linked to the betrayal and slaughter of the Knights Templar, the number had other meanings.
Older ones.
In Christian lore, the addition of Christ to the twelve apostles at the Last Supper signified ascension, resurrection, and enlightenment. Yet Judas’s betrayal caused many to view the number as an ill omen. The same double meaning existed in Norse mythology, with the appearance of a thirteenth guest, Loki, at the banquet where a favorite son of Odin was killed.
The number thirteen equated to immortality in Ancient Egypt.
Romulus and the twelve shepherds, Roland and the twelve knights.
The thirteenth Tarot card is Death, signifying transition. The Illuminati and the Masons and the numerologists practically slobber all over the number.
Viktor gathered his Swaine Adeney leather suitcase and followed his valet to a black Mercedes sedan. On the seat beside him, a bottle of vintage absinthe beckoned like a siren’s song.
Complete sobriety was not a state that interested Viktor. Not when his job consisted of probing the mysteries of the universe and peering into the winters of men’s souls.
And Viktor had no intention of changing professions.
Using a bucket of ice and accoutrements the driver had procured, Viktor prepared his favorite drink and wondered what he would find at Bonniecombe. He assumed the Xhosa child had been buried alive, but how? A death-like state could be achieved in various ways, most notoriously in the real-life cases of zombies in Haiti, where Voodoo priests used tetrodotoxins derived from the puffer fish to sedate their victims.
Yet Voodoo was not part of South African culture, and the state of the boy had born no resemblance to Haitian zombies, emaciated figures who exhibited slow, clumsy, and purposeless mannerisms.
By all accounts, the Xhosa boy had returned with an enhanced muscularity that implied the use of powerful steroids and growth hormones. Yet even that did not explain the enlarged veins or the dagger-like fingers, anomalies for which Viktor had no answer.
Two related but separate mysteries, then. The faked death and the subsequent physical changes.
Or perhaps they weren’t separate. Perhaps some bacterium or radioactive compound in the slum’s water had taken hold of the boy before his death, altered his biochemical state, and literally awakened him from the grave.
How to explain the other two mutations, then? Separated by thousands of miles?
“Bonniecombe, sir,” Viktor’s driver called out.
The professor looked up. In the distance, a handful of white spires sat primly at the base of a russet and swamp-green mountain range that loomed over the settlement like a pile of rumpled laundry. A thick layer of mist covered the middle third of the peaks.
Viktor’s last thought as he drove into Bonniecombe was of Dominic Grey. The professor knew his closest ally wasn’t ready to work again. Not by a long shot.
Yet after looking into his friend’s eyes, Viktor feared the consequences of leaving Grey on his own even more than asking for his help. The professor hoped the case would provide a distraction and help bring Grey back to life.
The sedan exited the N2 and rolled into a pretty town marked by well-maintained streets and elegant Cape Dutch architecture. Clusters of semi-tropical vegetation made Bonniecombe feel like a garden backed by a high stone wall. Hints of lavender and rosemary drifted through the cracked window of the sedan.
The professor’s driver dropped him at a bed and breakfast with a view of the mountains and a trellis slathered in crimson bougainvillea. Viktor checked his watch. He barely had time to check in, drop his bags, and wash before meeting with the local police.
The Bonniecombe police station was tucked inside a quaint administrative building with a white, curlicue façade. A receptionist led him to a conference room overlooking a park. File cabinets, a whiteboard, and a coffee maker provided bland décor.
A female officer in her early forties greeted Viktor from behind a linoleum table. “Welcome to Bonniecombe, Professor. I’m Sergeant Linde.”
Her tanned hands folded stiffly in front of her, the sergeant afforded Viktor a guarded stare. Since none of the victims was the subject of a criminal investigation yet, Jacques had given the Bonniecombe police a cover story about an investigation into local witchcraft to smooth over Viktor’s involvement. A suspected tie-in between organ traffickers and indigenous religion.
She said, “I’m here to assist, though I fail to see the connection to the local religious community.” Her diction sounded more like a businesswoman than a local cop. “You do realize the vast majority of Xhosa are Christian?”
“It only takes one bad actor to spoil the show,” Viktor said.
She leaned back in her chair. “The Xhosa have no history of organ harvesting. So please, ya, tell me about the connection between their priests and the international cartels? Because I’ve never heard of one.”
Viktor took a closer look at the sergeant. Wavy blond hair brushed the shoulders of her navy blue, police-issue blazer. A beige skirt, white dress shirt, and a boomerang-shaped bow tie completed the uniform. A tall and rangy woman, age and sun had tightened the skin around her eyes, though she was still fit and handsome.
“It’s not uncommon,” he said, “for outside religious groups to infiltrate a new territory and align with criminal elements.”
She met his eyes. “We’ve heard nothing of the sort.”
Viktor spread his hands. He didn’t want to poison the relationship with lies at the beginning. The truth was, though he had seen no evidence of ritual involvement, he didn’t yet know what was going on.
“I’m here to assist,” Viktor said. “Why don’t we concentrate on the facts, and save the suspicion for the criminals?”
“Ya, let’s. Because someone took that boy out of his grave and did that to his hands.” She gave a little shiver that did not seem faked. “And I’ll bet my homestead it wasn’t a Xhosa witch doctor.”
“What does the coroner say?” Viktor asked. “The one who proclaimed him dead the first time?”
“She stands by her report.”
After the re-appearance of Akhona Mzotho in the township, the police had investigated the gravesite and found an empty coffin beneath a pile of hard-packed dirt. Most families in the township couldn’t afford funeral expenses and simply buried their dead in a hole. Akhona’s parents had spent what little savings they had on a wooden coffin, which bore no scratch marks or other signs of disturbance.
Which meant someone had dug him up, returned the coffin intact, and restored the gravesite.
“I’ll need to talk to her,” Viktor said. “What about the case against the boy’s killer?”
“The prosecutor isn’t sure how to proceed. Everyone thought he was dead, and with the chaos in the township and the potential self-defense
angle . . . it’s complicated.”
“Indeed.”
“We haven’t found any special connection between the boy and the man who shot him, if that’s what you’re asking. No motive for the murder other than panic and superstition and ignorance.”
“It’s hard to term it ignorance, when we don’t even know what happened.”
She gave him a sharp glance. “I meant the sort of ignorance that leads a grown man to shoot a teenage boy in the head and not wait for the police, even if the boy did return from the grave and rip down power lines with his bare hands.”
Viktor tipped his head in agreement. Like many Afrikaner communities he had encountered, partly due to an insular culture and partly due to the ostracization of South Africa during Apartheid, Viktor knew that earning the trust of Sergeant Linde and the residents of Bonniecombe would be an uphill battle.
“You examined the body?” Viktor asked.
“Of course.”
“I assume everything you saw made it into the report?”
She smirked.
The professor steepled his fingers. “Are there any medical research facilities nearby? Besides the local hospital?”
“No,” she said, though the slight delay in her response and the shadow behind her gaze said otherwise. Sergeant Linde was not a good liar, but now was not the time to press her.
It was also a strange thing to lie about, Viktor thought. Either there were medical research facilities or there were not.
“You’re wondering about the dash and the number thirteen,” she said, as if to cover up her response.
Viktor gave a curt nod. “I’d like to speak to the boy’s parents. Can that be arranged?”
“I’ve already interviewed them.”
“I’d like to do so again.”
“They’re quite distraught, as you can imagine. And they have no idea what happened.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to judge that for myself. There might be circumstances of which they are . . . unaware. Details that lie within my specialty.”
Sergeant Linde tapped a pen against the desk. “I’ll arrange a visit, then. Have you ever visited a township before?”
