“Oh boy,” said Acosta, staring at the dead animal. “What a mess.”
The dogs were excited by all the meat and blood, pulling on their leashes and baying until Acosta told them to shut up and sit.
“I’m going to cut for scent,” he told Cash. “When I get it, I’ll give you a call on the radio.”
He wrapped the leashes around his hands and gave the dogs a command, and they leapt up and went off, straining ahead as Acosta controlled them. He soon vanished into the trees. The sun was now rising, the morning light invading the forest, chasing away tendrils of mist. The chill of the night was receding.
Cash’s radio crackled. It was Acosta. “Got a scent trail. Northwest of the site, at ten o’clock, one hundred yards. Heading out.”
“Keep in touch.”
Cash turned back to Romanski. He looked like a polar bear in his white suit, on his hands and knees poking around the forest floor. He was a good worker, meticulous, and never seemed to get tired.
“How much longer is this going to take?” she asked.
Romanski shook his head. “This is a bitch of a crime scene.”
“Has anyone found anything I should know about?”
“Like what, Boardwalk or Park Place?”
“Ha ha.”
“Nothing yet,” said Romanski. “Just a shitload of what I’m sure will turn out to be useless evidence, but gotta bag it all.”
Cash could hear the deep, mournful baying of Acosta’s dogs in the distance fade away into silence. She began to feel uneasy and called him on the radio. “Everything okay?”
“All good,” said Acosta. “A strong trail for a change—you can hear it in their baying.”
“Where’s it heading?”
“Upslope, into the mountains. Into fallen timber. Steep. These sons of bitches really went into dense country. Looks like maybe they forgot to dab on their bile perfume.”
“Okay. Be careful.”
She heard voices, and now McFaul arrived, huffing and puffing, his face all red and dripping with sweat, with a woman in tow, whom Cash figured must be the forensic vet. She quickly donned a monkey suit, ducked under the tape, and went over to the dead mammoth, crouching by the head and examining it with a pair of magnifying goggles. Cash watched as the vet tipped the head over, looking at the severed neck and spinal cord. She could see McFaul eyeing the scene with a look of horror and disgust on his face.
“Sir?” she said.
He turned. She hesitated. Proceed strategically, she told herself. “I wonder, sir, if you’ve thought more since our last conversation about the possibility of closing the resort—especially considering this new development.”
McFaul puckered up his face, irritated. “Well, as I said, that would be a drastic step. It would inflame the press and attract even more attention. And you know, we’ve got a problem with that man Gunnerson.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s making phone calls to the press, saying a lot of crazy stuff. Barrow won’t let him leave his suite, but he’s causing plenty of trouble even so.”
Cash shook her head. “I’m not surprised. We questioned him, and I think he knows more than he’s letting on. But getting back to closing the resort—consider, sir, what would happen if another guest were killed. The press would naturally ask why we hadn’t shut the place down after the first two killings. And think of all the threats from that cultist priest on the video. An excess of caution is better than a lack of it—don’t you think?”
She could see the wheels in McFaul’s head working. “You make a good point, Agent Cash.”
“If you feel we don’t have the authority, we could recommend a shutdown to the governor. Then we’d be on record having made the request—if anything should happen, we’ll be covered …” She let her voice trail off. She could see she’d finally hit on an argument that found traction with McFaul.
“Yes. I believe you’re right.”
“You might call him now, while it’s early and his day is just beginning.” She had to get him to act before McFaul contacted Barrow and got talked out of it.
McFaul checked his watch, took out his cell phone, looked at it thoughtfully as if composing his thoughts, and then dialed. It took a while to get through, and she could hear him finally speaking to the governor. The conversation went on for a while, and she saw it was not going well. Finally, he hung up.
“Well, we tried.”
“Barrow got to him first,” she said.
He looked at her. “I would guess he did. But at least …” He hesitated. “We’re now on record.”
McFaul, she thought, was never so concerned about a case as to when it might impact the CBI’s public image and his own career. That call provided excellent ass-covering, and even someone as dumb as McFaul could see that.
For the next hour, she watched the forensic vet work on the pieces of the mammoth, even as Romanski and his team continued their evidence gathering. Finally, the vet left off her work and came out from the perimeter, taking off her now-bloodied hood.
“What you got?”
She shook her head. “The animal was butchered and some cuts of meat and sections of organs taken.” She worked to catch her breath. Despite the chill air, she was sweating. “It’s a known fact that human hunters butcher an elephant from the inside out. The skin is just too tough to hack through, and it’s a lot easier to crawl inside the animal and get your organs and meat that way. And that,” she said, “is what was done here.”
“Right. And how much did they take?”
“Not all that much. Just the choicest cuts—part of the liver, kidneys, heart, and the tenderloin. Tongue and testicles too.”
“Jesus. How much more time do you need?”
“A few more hours.” She pulled the hood back up and ducked under the tape, soon disappearing into the body cavity again.
Cash pulled out her radio and called Acosta. “How’s your progress?”
“Trail is still strong,” said Acosta’s staticky voice. “This is damned rough country, though.” She could hear through the radio the baying of the dogs. “Pretty steep, and we’re now in a ravine, heading up toward the tree line.”
“Call if you find anything.”
Cash lowered the radio. Something about this bothered her. The mammoth, killed within a thousand yards of the lodge. The “good, strong” trail leading away, up into a narrow ravine. The fact that the killers hadn’t apparently used their dog-confusing scent, so that their trail was easy to follow.
“It’s a trap,” said Cash.
Colcord stared at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Acosta and his dogs are being deliberately lured up there. This feels planned.” She hit the radio call button. “Acosta, do you read?”
His voice came through a hiss of static. “I read, barely. We got a lot of cliff around us blocking the signal.”
In the background, the dogs were baying wildly now.
“Where are you now?”
“Way up in the mountains. At the tree line. The ravine’s opened up a little into a meadow. A real bitch of a climb to get here … Hey, we’ve got something here …”
She could hear him breathing hard, hear the dogs going crazy.
“There’s a rock shelter up there … Looks like a campsite hidden in it …”
“Fresh campsite?”
“What the hell?” Acosta’s voice carried a note of horror. “Jesus Christ.”
“What is it?”
The dogs continued baying madly.
A long hiss of static, his voice unintelligible.
“Acosta! You cut out. What is it?”
More static, and then his voice emerged, high-pitched. “Bones … Human bones. We got a campsite, firepit … two human skulls … burnt and broken up …”
More static.
“Acosta?”
“Bones … Chopped up … I think … they were, like, cooked …”
“What’s your GPS location?”
He gave it to her. Colcord scribbled it down in his notebook as she repeated it out loud. Then she said, “Acosta, get your ass out of there! You’re in a possible ambush situation. You copy?”
“Copy that. I just can’t believe this shit …”
“I’m calling in choppers for backup, out.”
She changed channel and reached Maximilian at the lodge. “Scramble two choppers with armed guys up to this location.” She read off the GPS coordinates.
Everyone on-site had stopped work and was now staring at her.
“What is it?” McFaul asked, rushing over. “What’s happened?”
“Looks like Acosta and his dogs found the bodies of our two missing hikers,” she said. “It seems … they’ve been cannibalized.”