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Maria drove back to the office, which freed him to daydream about stretching his aching body across a nice soft mattress.
“Well, that happened,” Maria said.
“Talking about Quint?”
“Yeah. A ten-minute, completely unproductive conversation that left me desperate for a bath.” She glanced at him. “Do we need this garbage? Maybe we should ditch the courtrooms and start flipping houses. I hear those guys make tons of money. I’ll be St. Pete’s Joanna Gaines.”
“Only if I can be Chip.”
Maria glanced at him. “I will say this, Dan. At least you’re consistent. First you took me to a disgusting strip joint. Then to an even more disgusting motel room. What’s next, a deposition in the sewer system?”
“I think it’s time we confronted Conrad Sweeney face to face.”
“That would be even worse.”
A jazzy ringtone burst from his phone. “What’s up?”
Garrett got straight to the point. “The cops may have found the cabin.”
“Ossie’s cabin?”
“There’s a yellow triangle on the porch gable. Texting you a location pin. Out in the Everglades.”
Dan slammed a fist onto the dashboard. “Yes! That’s what I’m talking about!”
Maria grinned. “Good news?”
“If it confirms Ossie’s story—absolutely.” He glanced at the map on his phone. “Truly secluded. No wonder no one found Ossie all those years.”
He switched the call to speakerphone so Maria could listen in. “What else do you know?”
“Not much. The cops aren’t in the habit of spilling everything they know to defense attorneys. But I did get a call from Kakazu’s lieutenant.”
That made sense. Kakazu was a straight shooter. “He knows it relates to our case. He’s doing his duty to inform us of potentially exculpatory evidence. Does anyone still live there?”
“I don't think so. But I didn’t get many details. You need to get out there.”
“Course correction as we speak,” Maria said. “I’ll drop you off.”
“You don’t want to come with?”
“Tramping through the swamp in these two-thousand-dollar jeans? No thank you.”
“Tell Kakazu I’m on my way, Garrett. Do you know what they found inside the cabin?”
Garrett’s voice dropped several octaves. “Yeah. Bodies. Lots and lots of dead bodies. Corpses.” He took another breath. His voice wavered. “Mummies, actually. Most of them young boys.”
* * *
Dan couldn’t believe...well, most of what he’d learned in the last twenty-four hours. But at least this startling development was a positive one. For the first time ever, the crazy story Ossie told that no one thought had the slightest credibility started to look as if it might be true.
The other massively unbelievable aspect of this journey, of course, was that he was being led by a police guide through largely uncharted and undeveloped stretches of Florida swampland. His Air Jordans did not function all that well in wet, marshy ground, and the less said about what this was doing to his Zenga suit, the better.
He usually liked being outdoors, but this was something else again. Birds dive-bombed with such frequency he felt he was in a war zone. Cranes? Herons? Egret? He really should have spent more time studying the local birds, and he would’ve too, except he was terribly busy and that sounded terribly boring.
He pulled his jacket tighter around himself. It was cold out here, cold and wet, even though the sun was shining. Maybe it was the power of suggestion. Get your sneakers wet, and you’ll be cold for the rest of the day, regardless of the climate. Still, the hike took hours. He should’ve chartered a helicopter.
“How much longer?” he asked Sergeant Enriquez. Kakazu always seemed to put him in charge of the crime scene, even when it was a million miles off the beaten track.
“At least another hour.” Enriquez appeared to be using some combination of cell phone location service and compass app to navigate. He said they had asked the FSBI to loan them a drone to help the forensic teams find their way. “We can’t take the most direct route. Too much brush in the way.”
“And yet we think someone lived out here?”
“Guess that will be your client’s story. I can’t imagine.” Enriquez looked up. “I’m a homebody. I like to be where I can get Netflix and order a pizza.”
He took another step—and felt his foot sink into a pothole, past his ankle. “Blast!” He jerked his foot out.
“Be careful,” Enriquez warned. “It’s possible to get completely stuck. You might lose your shoe. Or be here a very long time.”
Maria was right to stay away. He probably should have followed her lead. But time was ticking. He was already starting to regret his whacked-out idea of asking for the earliest possible trial setting. This eleventh-hour discovery only made it worse. But if there was something in that cabin that might help Ossie, or shed some light on what was going on in this case, he had to know about it. “Any other advice?”
“Give up the lucrative life of the defense attorney and join the forces of good.”
“Something more practical.”
“Start buying your suits at JCPenney.”
* * *
Dan was greeted by Kakazu as soon as he and Enriquez emerged from the clearing. It was almost as if the homicide detective was waiting for him. Or was so amazed Dan had actually made it that he decided to offer his personal congratulations.
“I must say, I am impressed,” Kakazu said.
“You didn’t think I’d come?”
“I knew you’d try. I just didn’t think you’d make it.”
“Ridiculous. I’m an athlete. This was easy.” He brushed the mud and grunge from his clothes and wrung out his lower pant legs. “Kitesurfing is hard. This was just...”
“Miserable?”
“Something like that.”
“Come inside. There’s a lot you’re going to want to see. Correction—” He stopped short. “There’s a lot here you don’t want to see and will never be able forget. You’ll probably never forgive me for showing it to you. But you insisted.”
“I can handle it. I’ve seen a lot in my time.”
Kakazu almost smirked. “Believe me, you’ve never encountered this. I should’ve sent you a trigger warning.”
He mounted the porch. The front gable did have a yellow triangle on it. The triangle pointed upward and appeared a bit smudged at the bottom. And the cabin faced west, so Ossie’s description proved true on two counts. Of course, the whole place was so filthy it was hard to see anything clearly.
Kakazu opened the front door. The odor sliced him up like a knife. Sharp and inescapable. Putrid. Made his eyes water. Took a death grip on his lungs and wouldn’t let him go.
Kakazu handed him a blue face mask, like something a surgeon might wear. He put it on. It didn’t help much, but he left it on just the same.
Kakazu led him into the cabin. It appeared to have only one room furnished with standard table and chair, some dishes by a sink, a cot in the corner. A few doors that might lead to other areas. Kakazu pointed toward a gaping hole in the floor. A wooden plank revealed a ladder leading down into what appeared to be some kind of basement.
He drew in his breath. “Were they children?”
Kakazu nodded grimly. “Young boys. Every one of them.”
He felt a catch in his throat. “How—” He looked around the tiny room. “In here?”
“There’s a cage in the back. Chains.”
“And then?”
Kakazu drew in his breath. “When he was done playing with them, he killed them and brought them down here.”
“It’s...a basement full of rotting child bodies.”
“Not rotting.” He started down the stairs, apparently assuming Dan would follow. “Mummified.”