Why would someone wander out into the middle of the Sonoran, a solid half-mile from the nearest dirt road, only to shove a length of pipe into the ground?
He crouched and pulled the plastic tube out of the earth. The sand immediately collapsed in its stead. He brushed it away with the prongs of his stick, revealing a shallow system of roots and a warren of darkness beneath.
The sand slowly slid back into place.
This was all wrong.
Wiping the streams of sweat from beneath the thick braid on his neck, he surveyed the landscape of golden desert painted by creosote and sage in choppy green and blue brushstrokes. Beyond rose a rugged backdrop of stratified buttes, red as the blood of his ancestors. Their spirits still inhabited the Sonoran Desert, lingering in the memories of crumbling stone walls and scattered potsherds.
He lowered his black eyes again to the ground. Those weren't roots. Not six feet from the shrub.
Turning the stick around, he shoved the duct-taped handle into the nearly invisible hole until it lodged against something solid and levered it upward. A tent of what appeared to be leather-wrapped sticks broke through the sand, smooth and tan.
His instincts told him to grab his sack and head back to the truck. Forget about the diamondback and the odd length of pipe. His mother had named him Kajika, he who walks without sound, as a constant reminder that there were things in life from which he would be better served to silently slink away.
But those weren't roots.
He kicked the sand aside with the toe of his boot, summoning a cloud of dust that clung to his already dirty jeans and flannel shirt, thickening the sweat on his face.
With a sigh, he unholstered the canteen from his hip and drew a long swig, closing his eyes and reveling in the cool sensation trickling down his throat.
"Couldn't have left well enough alone," he said aloud, grabbing his bag and stick and heading back toward his truck, where there was a shovel waiting in the cluttered bed.
No, that wasn't a tangle of roots. Not unless roots could be articulated with joints.
* * *
The sun had fallen to the western horizon, bleeding the desert scarlet by the time he climbed back out of the pit. His undershirt was soaked, his flannel draped over a clump of sage. He dragged the back of his hand across his forehead and slapped the sweat to the ground. Strands of long ebon hair had wriggled loose from the braid to cling to his cheeks. Night would descend soon enough, bringing with it the much anticipated chill.
The rhythmic hooting of an owl drifted from its distant hollow in a cereus cactus.
Tipping back the canteen, he drained the last of the warm water and cast it aside, unable to wrench his gaze from the decayed old bundle he had exhumed. Tattered fabric bound its contents into an egg shape, a desiccated knee protruding from a frayed tear, exposing the acutely flexed lower extremity he had initially mistaken for roots, the mummified flesh taut over the bones. Even though the rest was still shrouded in an ancient blanket tacky with bodily dissolution, it didn't take a genius to imagine what the leg was attached to.
"Burnin' daylight," he said at last, sliding back down into the hole.
He slashed the bundle with the shovel, the sickly-smelling cloth parting easily for the dull blade. The foul breath of decomposition belched from within.
"Moses in a rowboat," he gasped, tugging his undershirt up over his nose and mouth, biting it to hold it in place.
Casting the shovel aside, he leaned over the bundle and grasped either side of the torn blanket. He could now clearly see two legs, both bent sharply, pinned side by side.
The stench of death was nauseating.
He jerked his hands apart with the sound of ripping worn carpet from a floorboard. The shredded blanket fell away to betray its contents.
A gaunt face leered back at him, teeth bared from shriveled lips, nose collapsed, eyes hollow, save the concave straps of the dried eyelids. Its long black hair was knotted and tangled, fallen away in patches to expose the brown cranium. It had been folded into tight fetal position, its thighs pinning its crossed arms to its chest. Lengths of rope, hairy with decay, bound the body across the shins and around the back, tied so forcefully the dried skin had peeled away from beneath. There was no muscle left, no adipose tissue. Only leathered skin and knobby bone.
Kajika was overcome by a sense of reverence. Could this possibly be one of his ancestors? Could the very blood that had crusted and rotted into the fabric and putrid sand now flow through his veins?
He felt the spirits of the desert all around him, dancing in the precious moment when the moon materialized from the fading stain of the sunset and countless stars winked into being.
Movement, a mere shift in the shadows, dragged his attention to the corpse a single heartbeat before a wave of diamondbacks poured out of the hollow abdomen where they had recently made their den and washed over his boots.
III
Death Valley
40 km West of Nazca, Peru
The Nazca Desert stretched away from her to the eastern horizon, rising and falling in rolling dunes, contrasted by the distant blue of the jagged Andes, shrouded by the omnipresent snow clouds. Behind her, lush mangrove forests sheltered the tributaries feeding the Pacific Ocean, green walls of foliage at a standoff against the white sand. Only the occasional mangrove braved the desolation, oases of withering leaves interrupting the ivory perfection. From afar, the desert appeared pristine and untouched, but from where she stood now, her hiking boots ankle-deep in the sand, it became an apocalyptic wasteland. Human bones were scattered everywhere: long femora and humeri, curved segments of rib cages, vacant-eyed skulls, and the pebbles of carpals and tarsals, all bleached and baked by the sun. Many had been gnawed by feral mongrels or provided structure for spider webs and reptile burrows, though even more were broken and trampled puzzle pieces, never again to be assembled. The ancient skeletons had been unceremoniously disinterred and cast aside by marauding groups of
huaqueros
, grave robbers pillaging their own heritage for the most prized possessions of the dead.
Elliot turned away with a sad smile, imagining artifacts of incalculable archeological value being pawned for next to nothing, and slid down the slope to her dig where the team of graduate students crouched inside the rebar- and rope-cordoned grids, excavating the ground in centimeter levels. So far they had already unearthed three intact Inca mummy bundles against the odds. The
huaqueros
had a sixth sense for buried gold and were as thorough as they were destructive. She had something of a gift herself, though. If there were a mummy to be found, Dr. Elliot Archer would find it. There was little scientific method to the search. She simply closed her eyes and tried to envision the world as it was more than a thousand years prior, constructing the scene detail by detail until she felt as though she were really there.
She tucked a stray shock of raven-black hair beneath her Steelers ball cap, the fabric long since faded to a weathered brown, and tugged the curved bill low to shield her eyes, blue as the placid heart of a tropical sea. Exhausted faces acknowledged her as she passed, using the distraction to stretch the kinks from their backs and legs before once again resuming their tasks of removing the earth from the grids, sifting it through wire mesh, and meticulously cataloging everything larger than the fine desert sand. The sun was only beginning its ascent and they were already covered with a thick skin of dirt with only a handful of teeth, corn kernels, and bits of charcoal to show for it.
"Let me know when you reach China," she said in an effort to combat the looks of disappointment on their faces, eliciting a few smiles but not a single weary chuckle. Theirs was a generation accustomed to acquiring anything in the world with a single click of the mouse, the simple lessons of patience harder learned. She was less than a decade older than most of them, but the generational gap seemed to grow by the year. At least there was that moment of silence in her passage before the sound of scraping trowels and sifting resumed, reassuring her that the gap hadn't grown too wide, at least not from behind.
There were six khaki tents past the site, three to either side of a path trampled into the sand. The three mummies were housed in the first on the left, still bundled in fetal position within layers of hand-woven blankets that had assumed the fluids from the dead and hardened over time. She heard the thrum of the generator powering the portable x-ray setup from the tent to her right where the radiographer was presumably preparing to begin taking films of the bundles. Attempting to unwrap the mummies would destroy them. Using x-rays allowed them to visualize not only the body, but the valuables and various bowls of corn, grains, and charcoal hidden inside. Preserving the integrity of their discoveries also helped maintain the often strained relationship with the Peruvian government, which frowned upon the rape of its heritage, at least by foreigners. The tent beyond was draped with tarps and served as the darkroom, the scent of chemicals seeping out on toxic fumes. The remaining tents to the left were larger and functioned as housing, sleeping the unpaid labor in matchstick fashion, while she shared the final tent on the right, which also acted as their satellite communication center, with her fellow professors, Dr. Abe Montgomery from the University of Texas and Dr. Eldon Wilton from Vanderbilt. As she approached, Dr. Montgomery threw back the flap.
"Ah, Elliot," he said, his eyes brightening when he saw her. He reminded her of Santa Claus on Jenny Craig, an affable bear of a man who radiated the wonder of a child. "I was about to come looking for you. We just received a very interesting call on the satellite phone, followed by an equally intriguing email."
He was trying to hold a poker face, but the corners of his mouth twitched with excitement.
"Oh, my gosh. Did the Connolly Grant come through?"
"Better," he said, holding back the flap so she could enter. "You apparently know a Dr. Mondragon at Northern Arizona University?"
"He was my faculty advisor in anthropology as an undergrad. I haven't talked to him in years. Why...?"
Montgomery didn't answer. Instead, he turned his back and led her through the piles of blankets and sleeping bags to the rear of the tent where the laptop sat on the lone table beside a kerosene lamp. He allowed her to study the image on the screen for a long moment before speaking.
"Well?" he said.
Her heart was beating too fast to formulate her thoughts. She rubbed her eyes and scrutinized every detail of the picture again.
When she finally turned to face him, her hands were shaking.
"Where did he say this picture was taken?"
"Arizona. Outside Winslow, to be precise."
"There's no way," she snapped.
He held up his hands in supplication. "Don't shoot the messenger."
"This can't be real," she said, though she allowed herself a hopeful smile.
"There's only one way to know for sure."
"Yeah, but..."
He interrupted her with a sly grin. "Eldon's gassing the Jeep. You can be at the airport before nightfall. We've got you covered here. You just remember that when you publish."
Elliot squealed and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing for everything she was worth.
IV
Byron G. Rogers Federal Building
Denver, Colorado
Killer.
Carver leaned over the sink and splashed cold water in his face. When he looked at the mirror again, the word finger-painted in the blood of an innocent child was gone and he stared only at the reflection of the man saddled with the title, bearing the burden in his very soul. He had failed the girl. Whether or not he had abused and butchered her himself was irrelevant, for her blood was still on his hands.
Killer.
He had to turn away from the weary, bloodshot eyes staring back at him, water running down his stubbled cheeks like tears. His tie was crooked and his shirt collar and the cuffs of his blazer were soaked, his red hands chafed from trying to wash away the unforgivable sin of inaction.
Exhaustion had replaced the adrenaline, yet he hadn't been able to sleep. He couldn't go home, for agents still infested his study, combing through microscopic particles for any clue as to why four children needed to die, relegating him to his small office in the federal building, his uncomfortable chair, and his thoughts. Closing his eyes only summoned the image of the decapitated girl looking back at him from the ether through glazed and filmy eyes set into bruised, bloody sockets, casting the blame he had already willingly accepted. Sometimes her tattered lips moved to echo the sentiments of the mirror, which he now saw as the physical manifestation of his conscience.
Killer.
Unanswered questions sprung unbidden to his mind. Why had the monster revealed himself in such a way? He had taken an incalculable risk in doing so and had forfeited his life for what amounted to nothing more than insanity. Carver couldn't shake the convenience of it. The man he had been tracking for two months, whom he had barely come close to cornering, had been waiting for him in his own house and now the hunt was over. It was too neat, too tidy. Too abrupt. Had the man been following him? Was there a leak somewhere in the Bureau? Was the monster an insider, or if not, how was he kept apprised of the investigation? Most importantly, though, Carver needed to know why. What deviant appetites had this psychopath needed to satisfy that could only be sated by the torture and slaughter of helpless children?
Despite the inarguable finality of the monster's death, Carver wouldn't be able to conclude his investigation until he was able to explain to four sets of grieving parents why their daughters had to die, knowing that no such justification existed. There were simply times when the black heart of a brutal, dying world bled into the lives of those once oblivious to it, whose days had never before been touched by an evil that no longer simply lay dormant, but actively boiled through the planet's crust, afflicting the dark minds of men and women who refused to bear their pain in silence, but actively searched for others upon whom to inflict it. A black scourge of the light in all things, living shadows passing lives from the periphery where they never come clearly into focus until their darkness falls upon the unsuspecting, and the world is revealed to them for what it truly is.