Crown of Serpents (31 page)

But his fist stopped in mid air.

“Enough!” shouted Joe. He held Jake’s wrist tight. “You’re going to kill him.”

Jake shook his head, dazed, not sure where he was. He looked back at his uncle — shotgun in one hand and sweat streaming down his face.

“What’s wrong with you?” Joe huffed.

Jake’s eyes glazed over. His head pounded from the blows he had taken. He looked down at the man he was beating to a pulp. Clown Face was out like the shattered light, his nose, mouth, and cheeks spouting bloody cuts and hideous swelling.

“We need to get out of here now!” said Joe. He gave Jake a shake.

Finally Jake came to. He pulled out his vehicle key ring and tweaked the remote unlock button toward the Tahoe. Joe raised the back hatch and threw his equipment inside as Jake gathered the backpack with the keg along with his rifle. Joe grabbed the two unconscious men by their ankles and dragged them off the driveway to avoid being run over. Jake confiscated the silenced pistol, noting it was a Beretta 92. Finally, he also stole the brass knuckles off of Clown Face’s hand. He then promptly jumped in the driver’s seat. Joe hopped in the passenger seat.

Jake slammed the truck into reverse, backed out, shifted to drive and accelerated out of the driveway. As they turned onto East Lake Road they noticed several nearby residential houselights turn on. The shotgun boom obviously awakened the neighborhood. As he sped back up Henderson Hill Road to escape probing eyes, Jake glanced over to his uncle. “Nice shot, by the way.” Joe simply nodded, still breathing heavily.

Jake needed a safe resting spot. His injuries hurt like hell. But he also wanted to see what was inside the powder keg that he risked their lives for. They decided their best bet was to get his uncle’s truck back at the fast food restaurant then both head over to the reservation and Miss Lizzie’s house. There they would hunker down in safety.

23

South of Conesus Lake.

“S
IR, IT’S KAY. We, ahh, ran into, ahh, some complications.” Mr. Kay pulled the Hummer to the shoulder of the road and stopped. He looked over at Rousseau in the front passenger seat. His head was thrown back on the headrest. Cuts, blood, and nasty bruises covered his face. His jaw was swollen and misshapen. Kay then looked in the rear view mirror. Mr. Jasper rubbed his temple, but was essentially back in business. He had the laptop out and was tuned into the GPS tracking software.

“Put Rousseau on,” demanded Nero, over the cell phone connection.

“He’s not doing so good,” murmured Kay. “Can’t talk. I think his jaw is broken. I just picked him and Jasper up.”

“Then you explain.”

“Bottom line, sir, we messed up. Tununda beat the shit out of both of them. Took Mr. Rousseau’s brass knuckles too. And he got off with The Mouth’s silenced pistol—”

“The one Ray used in the Ashland hit?”

“Yes sir. Jasper had it.”

“Duly noted,” Nero angrily spouted. “Continue.”

“He had help. There were two of them out there. Someone with a shotgun.”

“So basically, you fucking idiots got ambushed yourselves!” Nero growled. He then calmly demanded, “tell me about the keg.”

“Tununda dug it up. But then he escaped with it.”

Nero roared. “Imbeciles! Put me on speaker phone
now
!”

Kay pressed the speaker button. “You’re on, sir.”

“Are you tracking him now?”

“Yes sir,” Jasper loudly said from the back seat. “He’s headed north on Route 15. Same way he came in.”

“Are all three of you listening?” asked Nero in a calmer voice. He received two replies and a grunt back.

“I’m going to tell you the story of how Thomas Boyd, the owner of that keg, died back in 1779. Listen very carefully and learn from your mistakes.”

The three men sat up.

“After the Iroquois captured Boyd they stripped him bare and found he had been shot in the side. So they whipped him with thorns, right on that wound. Then they tied him to a tree and practiced throwing tomahawks around his head to get him in the right frame of mind. After that, they pulled out his nails, cut off his nose, plucked out one of his eyeballs, cut out his tongue, stabbed him with spears, and sliced off his shoulder. They even cut off his cock and balls. All the while they deliberately kept him conscious as they enacted their revenge. Finally, they opened his gut and pulled out his small intestine. They nailed it to a tree and forced him to walk around the tree until all of his guts unwound around the trunk. Then they scalped him. And then cut off his head for good measure. I swear, on my mother’s grave, if you three fucking idiots don’t get that keg back, I promise to use every technique our forefathers used on Boyd. There is a great secret in that keg that belongs to me. Do not come back without it.” The phone clicked dead.

Rousseau and Kay looked at each other with wide eyes.

Jasper shook in the back seat. “He’s insane, he’ll do it. Let’s go!”

McDonald’s restaurant. Avon, N.Y.

Back at the McDonalds parking lot Jake transferred all of the equipment to Joe’s pick up truck, with the exception of the keg backpack and M4 rifle. Those, he kept in his Tahoe. He then paced outside of his SUV while Joe ran into the restaurant to grab a couple of chocolate milkshakes.

A nagging question persisted in Jake’s throbbing head — the red light he saw after he was hit in the back of the head. Where did he see it? What was it? He retraced his steps during the fist-fight. Then suddenly it came to him. He walked the rear of his truck, bent low, and looked underneath the bumper where he had been knocked down. There it was, the blinking red light attached to a metal chip. He grasped it between his fingers and pulled it off. It had been kept secure with a magnet. Joe returned just as Jake rose up with the quarter-sized device in his hand.

“Whatcha got there?” asked Joe. He sucked hard from a straw dipped into a milkshake.

Jake flipped the chip in his hand. “A GPS tracking device. It’s how they ambushed us. And how they’re tracking us right now.” He stood up and showed his uncle. “I think they attached it up in Rochester while I was having lunch at the Strathallan. I barely remembered some guy walking in that looked like one of Nero’s boys.

“Ditch the thing.”

Jake grabbed the other milkshake out of Joe’s hand and dropped the device in. “I’m going to buy us a few minutes head start. Be right back. Get in your truck and start it up.” Jake ran into the side entrance of the restaurant, entered the men’s room, and placed the milkshake on top of a urinal.

Now back out in the parking lot he nodded for Joe to leave. Jake jumped into his vehicle and sped off on Joe’s tail. Two miles down the road they noticed a black Hummer barrel past them in the opposite direction. It turned into McDonalds.

Minutes later. McDonald’s.

“Mr. Nero, ah, they found the tracking device. We lost him,” said a hesitant Kay, in his cell phone. “But we think we have an idea of where he’s headed.” As he spoke he watched Rousseau in the passenger side with the blinking GPS tracking chip in his hand. It dripped with milkshake sludge.

Silence marked the other end of the phone connection.

“Mr. Nero?”

“Go ahead,” whispered Nero in a hoarse voice.

“Our tracking records show it’s either back to Rochester or back to the Tonawanda Reservation. Jasper just ran a summary of his travels since day one,” noted Kay. “We found that when he left Fort Niagara he went directly to the reservation. He made a quick stop at a gas station, probably to fill up, then continued on to a remote location where he spent a couple of hours.”

“Go on,” urged Nero.

“We pulled up that address and it belongs to an Elizabeth Canohocton—“

“Ahhhh,” rasped Nero. “Dear old Miss Lizzie Spiritwalker. I should have known that dirty old wench was behind all of this. I’m surprised she’s still breathing.”

“Sir?”

“Get to her house now,” Nero ordered. “Search the place for my treasure. If she’s alone take her hostage. I’ve got some questions for her. If Tununda is already there, take them all out. Bring me their scalps as proof. And then bring me my keg!”

“Will do.”

“And burn the place down.”

24

Late Wednesday night. Troop E Romulus Station.

“S
TATE POLICE, Hart speaking,” answered Rae on a late night telephone call. She had just finished packing her briefcase with some paperwork and was headed out the door. No one else was in the sub station. She took the call even though she was technically on leave. Having been bored out of her mind and freshly caught up on a full day of sleep, she thought she would pop into the station, grab some notes on the Indian grave arson, and then head back home to Seneca Falls. “How may I help you?”

“Hello? Yes,” started a female voice on the other end.

Rae seemed to recognize the voice.

“Umm, I… umm, I have some information regarding the murder of Stephen Ashland.”

“Yes, ma’am, go right ahead,” Rae quickly replied. She switched the phone receiver to her other ear and grabbed a pencil. She sat down at her desk, all the while thinking of where she had heard this woman before.

“Is the fifty grand still available?”

“Sure is. For information that leads to the arrest of our murder suspect Ray Kantiio.”

“Listen, I want to remain anonymous.”

“Absolutely,” assured Rae. Then it came to her — the voice. It was the woman who called just after the Cranberry Marsh incident. She had said then she represented the head of the Iroquois Confederacy Burial Rules Committee and wanted to arrange a meeting to view the old broach from the Indian corpse. Rae now realized this woman worked for Alex Nero. Her hands started to shake, but she kept her own voice solid. “We’ll protect your identity from the public. No one will ever know you gave us any information. But we’re going to need to know who you are so we can give you the reward. Is that going to be a problem?”

There was a pause.

“Ma’am?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m scared,” the woman replied, her voice cracking. “I can’t let my name out. It’s too risky.”

“That’s fine ma’am. Just take your time. We’ll work with you. What information would you like to pass on?”

“I know where The Mouth is?”

Rae tried to suppress her excitement. “Very good. Very good,” she said, scribbling furiously on her note pad. “Can you tell me where exactly? Time is of the essence, in case he moves.”

“Not now. I need to meet with you in person. I have some evidence to give you. Besides, he’s not going anywhere, believe me.”

Rae scratched her temple with the eraser of her pencil. “Alright, I’m on board. When and where can we meet?”

“I’ll be in your area tomorrow morning at eleven. I reserved the research room in the largest of the Three Bears Courthouses in Ovid. Just down the road from your station.”

“I know where it is. But can’t we meet any sooner? I don’t want the suspect to get away.”

“Trust me, he’s not going anywhere.”

“Okay, I trust you,” Rae acquiesced. “And how will I know who you are when we meet? What do you look like?”

“Umm. I’ll put on a New York Yankees baseball cap. How’s that? Listen, this is just going to be a drop, then you’re gone.”

“That’s fine,” replied Rae. “Would you tell me the nature of the evidence I’ll be receiving from you?”

“I’ve got his death recorded on tape.”

Rae’s eyes grew wide. She squinted. She stopped writing. “Whose death? Stephen Ashland’s?”

“No, Ray Kantiio’s. See you tomorrow.”

The phone connection ended.

The tip of Rae’s pencil broke off.

25

Same time. Lizzie Spiritwalker’s house. Tonawanda Reservation.

C
AREFULLY EXTRACTING HIS hand from the old wooden keg sitting on Miss Lizzie’s long coffee table, Joe placed the last of the British gold coins on one of several stacks he had made. “One hundred ninety-eight, one hundred ninety-nine, two hundred. They’re all here, all two hundred Guineas. Damn, this gold sure does look nice,” he remarked. Placed next to the glimmering stacks of coinage was a scattering of the rest of the war loot, including hand-carved smoking pipes, rings, wampum belts, and various hunting knives.

Miss Lizzie, sitting in her rocking chair petting her wide-eyed pet Chihuahua, named Choo-Choo, merely shook her head. She wore a toothless puss on her face.

Jake leaned over from his sofa seat next to Joe and meant to say something but his head pulsed with pain, even after the five aspirin he had already downed. He closed his eyes to fight off the throbbing. “Thomas Boyd wasn’t really
that
accurate now was he?” Jake managed to say with a smile.

“Whaddya mean?”

Jake pulled a gold coin off the top of a stack and flipped it to his uncle. He took another one and handed it to Lizzie. “Keep ‘em as a souvenirs.”

Lizzie held her coin up to the light and gazed at it. Her long white hair fluttered with a cock of her head. She gave a disapproving grunt and handed the coin back to Jake. “This is symbolic of everything that is wrong in this world,” she replied. “Royalty. They blind your vision and take away your dreams. I have no use for this crap.”

“Well, I don’t mind being king for a day.” Joe placed his coin in his pocket. He then leaned over and stuck his hand back in the keg to extract more loot. He pulled out a silver corset, then a compass, and finally a gold match case.

Jake’s eye lit up. “According to Boyd’s journal entries, those items were apparently from a dead officer in Butler’s British Rangers. A Virginian marksman looted them from the officer he killed and traded them with Boyd.”

While Joe was preoccupied with the British officer’s items, Lizzie picked up from the table one of the two wampum belts from the keg. Jake meanwhile, went back to his work creating a digital photographic record of each item. In front of him, on the table, was the silenced Beretta 92 he had grabbed from the man who pistol-whipped him. Next to the gun was Clown Face’s brass knuckles. And next to that was the torn fragment of paper containing the other half of the Kendaia cave directions. With his camera, Jake snapped a close up photo of that little piece of paper. As soon as he finished cataloging the rest of the items he was going to decipher the cave directions in full. He then carefully moved the paper artifact aside to view his next item.