Fatal Voyage (35 page)

 They got out, simultaneously releasing the safety clips on their
guns.

 As the deputy walked back to the second Jeep, Crowe turned to me.

 “You stay here.” I wanted to argue, but her look told me no way.

 “In the Jeep. Until I call you.”

 I rolled my eyes but said nothing. My heart was hammering, and I
shifted about more than Boyd.

 Crowe sounded another long blast on the horn while scanning the upper
windows of the house. The deputy rejoined her, a Winchester pump held diagonally across his
chest. They crossed to the house and climbed the steps.

 “Swain County Sheriff’s Department.” Her call sounded tinny in the thin
air. “Police. Please respond.”

 She banged on the door.

 No one came forth.

 Crowe said something. The deputy spread his feet and raised the
shotgun, and the sheriff began hammering the door with her boot. There was no give.

 Crowe spoke again. The deputy replied, keeping the barrel of his weapon
trained on the door.

 The sheriff walked back to the Jeep, sweat dampening the carrot frizz
escaping her hat. She rummaged in back, returned to the porch with a crowbar.

 Wiggling the tip between two shutters, she applied the full force of
her body weight. A more earnest rendition of my own jimmying act.

 Crowe repeated the movement, adding a Monica Seles grunt. A panel
yielded slightly. Sliding the bar farther into the crack, she heaved again, and the shutter flew
back, hitting the wall with a loud crash.

 Crowe laid down the bar, braced herself, then smashed a foot through
the window. Glass shattered, sparkled in the sun as it showered the porch with jagged shards.
Crowe kicked again and again, enlarging the opening. Boyd urged her on with excited
barks.

 Crowe stood back and listened. Hearing no movement, she poked her head
inside and called out again. Then the sheriff unholstered her gun and disappeared into darkness.
The deputy followed.

 Centuries later the front door opened, and Crowe stepped onto the
porch.

 She waved a “come on” gesture.

 I leashed Boyd with clumsy hands and wrapped the loop around my
wrist.

 Then I dug a Maglite from my pack. Blood pounded hard below my
throat.

 “Easy!” I aimed a finger at his nose.

 He practically dragged me out of the Jeep and up the steps.

 “The place is empty.”

 I tried to read Crowe’s face, but it was registering nothing. No
surprise, disgust, uneasiness. It was impossible to guess her reaction or emotion.

 “Better leave the dog here.”

 I tied Boyd to the porch railing. Clicking on the flashlight, I
followed her inside.

 The air that hit me was not as musty as I expected. It smelled of smoke
and mildew and something sweet.

 My olfactory lobe scanned its database. Church.

 Church?

 The lobe separated into components. Flowers. Incense.

 The front door opened directly into a parlor that spanned the entire
width of the house. Slowly, I swept my light from right to left. I could make out sofas,
armchairs, and occasional tables, grouped in clusters and draped with sheets. Floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves covered two sides.

 A stone fireplace filled trie-room’s northern wall, an ornate mirror
decorated its southern. In the dim glass I could see my beam slide among the shrouded shapes, our
own two images creeping with it.

 We progressed slowly, taking the house a room at a time. Dust motes
swirled in the pale yellow shaft, and an occasional moth fluttered across like a startled animal
in headlights on a two-lane blacktop.

 Behind us, the deputy held his shotgun raised. Crowe clutched her gun
double-handed, close to her cheek.

 The parlor opened onto a narrow hallway. Staircase on the right, dining
room on the left, kitchen straight ahead.

 The dining room was furnished with nothing but a highly polished
rectangular table and matching chairs. I counted. Eight at each side, one at each end.
Eighteen.

 The kitchen was in back, its door standing wide open.

 Porcelain sink. Pump. Stove and refrigerator that had seen more
birthdays than I had. I pointed to the appliances.

 “Must be a generator.”

 “Probably downstairs.”

 I heard the sound of voices below, and knew her deputies were in the
basement.

 Upstairs, a hallway led straight down the middle of the house. Four
small bedrooms radiated from the central artery, each with two sets of homemade bunks. A small
spiral staircase led from the end of the hall to a third-floor attic. Tucked under the eaves were
two more cots.

 “Jesus,” said Crowe. “Looks like Spin and Marty at the Triple R.”

 It reminded me of the Heaven’s Gate cult in San Diego. I held my
tongue.

 We were circling back down when either George or Bobby appeared on the
main staircase at the far end of the hall. The man was flushed and perspiring heavily.

 “Sheriff, you gotta see the basement.”

 “What is it, Bobby?”

 A bead of sweat broke from his hairline and rolled down the side of his
face. He backhanded it with a jerky gesture.

 “I’ll be god damned if I know.”

 A SET OF WOODEN STAIRS SHOT STRAIGHT FROM THE KITCHEN down

 to an underground cellar. The sheriff ordered Deputy Nameless to remain
topside while the rest of us went down.

 Bobby led, I followed, Crowe brought up the rear. George waited at the
bottom, flashlight darting like a klieg on opening night.

 As we descended, the air went from cool to refrigerator cold, and murky
dimness gave way to pitch-black. I heard a click behind me, saw Crowe’s beam at my feet.

 We gathered at the bottom, listening.

 No scurrying feet. No whirring wings. I aimed my light into the
darkness.

 We were in a large windowless room with a plank ceiling and cement
floor. Three sides were plaster, the fourth formed by the escarpment at the back of the house.
Centered in the cliff-side wall was a heavy wooden door.

 When I stepped backward, my arm brushed fabric. I spun and my beam
swung down a row of pegs, each holding an identical red garment. Handing my flashlight to George,
I unhooked and held one up. It was a hooded robe, the type worn by monks.

 “Holy mother of Jesus.” I heard Bobby wipe his face. Or cross
himself.

 I retrieved my flash, and Crowe and I probed the room, spotlighted by
George and Bobby.

 A full sweep produced nothing indigenous to a basement. No
worktable.

 No Peg-Board hung with tools. No gardening equipment. No laundry
tub.

 No cobwebs, mouse droppings, or dead crickets.

 “Pretty damn clean down here.” My voice echoed off cement and
stone.

 “Look at this.” George angled his beam to where plaster met
ceiling.

 A bearlike monster leered from the darkness, its body covered with
gaping, bloody mouths. Below the animal was one word:

 Baxbakualanuxsiwae.

 “Francis Bacon?” I asked, more to myself than to my companions.

 “Bacon painted people and snarling dogs, but never anything like
this.”

 Crowe’s voice was hushed.

 George moved his light to the next wall, and another monster stared
down. Lion mane, bulging eyes, mouth wide to devour a headless infant gripped between its
hands.

 “That’s a bad copy of one of Goya’s Black Paintings,” Crowe said. “I’ve
seen it in the Prado in Madrid.”

 The more I got to know the Swain County sheriff, the more she impressed
me.

 “Who is that creep?” George asked.

 “One of the Greek gods.”

 A third mural depicted a raft with billowed sail. Dead and dying men
littered the deck and dangled overboard into the sea.

 “Enchanting,” said George.

 Crowe had no comment as we crossed to the rock wall.

 The door was held in place by black wrought-iron hinges, drilled into
stone and cemented in place. A segment of chain connected a circular wrought-iron handle to a
vertical steel bar adjacent to the frame. The padlock looked shiny and new, and I could see fresh
scars in the granite.

 “This was added recently.”

 “Step back,” Crowe ordered.

 As we withdrew, our beams widened, illuminating words carved above the
lintel. I played my light over them.

 Fay ce que voudras 284

 “French?” Crowe asked, sliding her flashlight into her belt.

 “Old French, I think… ”

 “Recognize the gargoyles?”

 A figure decorated each corner of the lintel. The male was labeled

 “Harpocrates,” the female

 “Angerona.”

 “Sounds Egyptian.”

 Crowe’s gun exploded twice, and the smell of cordite filled the air.
She stepped forward, yanked, and the chain slithered loose. There was no resistance when she
lifted the latch.

 She pulled on the handle and the door opened outward. Cold air rolled
over us, smelling of dark hollows, sightless creatures, and epochs of time underground.

 “Maybe it’s time to bring him down,” said Crow.

 I nodded, and double-stepped up the stairs.

 Boyd showed his usual exuberance at being included, prancing and
snapping the air. He lapped my hand, then danced beside me into the house. Nothing on the ground
floor dampened his delight.

 Starting down the basement steps, I felt his body tense beside my
leg.

 I added an extra coil to the wrap around my hand, and allowed him to
pull me down the steps and across toward Crowe.

 Three feet short of the door he exploded, lunging and barking as he had
at the wall. Cold prickled up my spine and across my scalp.

 “All right, keep him over there,” said Crowe.

 Grabbing his collar with both hands, I dragged Boyd back and gave Bobby
the leash. Boyd continued to growl loudly and attempted to pull Bobby forward. I rejoined
Crowe.

 My flash revealed a cavelike tunnel with a series of alcoves to either
side. The floor was dirt, the ceiling and walls solid rock. Height to the tunnel’s arched top was
approximately six feet, width was about four feet. Length was impossible to tell. Beyond five
yards, it was a black hole.

 My pulse had not slowed since I’d entered the house. It now went for a
personal best.

 Slowly we crept forward, our beams probing the floor, the ceiling, the
walls, the recesses. Some were nothing more than shallow indentations.

 Others were good-sized caves with vertical metal bars and central gates
at their mouths.

 “Wine cellars?” Crowe’s question sounded muffled in the narrow
space.

 “Wouldn’t there be shelving?”

 “Check this out.”

 Crowe illuminated a name, then another, and another, chiseled the
length of the tunnel. She read them aloud as we progressed.

 “Sawney Beane. Innocent III. Dionysus. Moctezuma… Weird bedfellows. A
pope, an Aztec emperor, and the party meister himself.”

 “Who’s Sawney Beane?” I asked.

 “Hell if I know.”

 Her beam left the wall and shot straight into nothing. She threw out an
arm, catching me across the chest. I froze.

 Our lights leapt to the dirt at our feet. No drop-off.

 We rounded the corner and inched forward, sweeping our beams from side
to side. I could tell from the sound of the air that we had entered a large chamber of some sort.
We were circling its perimeter wall.

 The names continued. Thyestes. Polyphemus. Christie o‘ the Cleek.

 Cronus. I recognized no one from Veckhoff’s diary.

 Like the tunnel, the chamber gave onto a number of alcoves, some with
bars, others un gated Directly opposite our entrance point we found a wooden door, similar to
that at the head of the tunnel, and secured with the same chain-and-padlock arrangement. Crowe
dealt with it in the same way.

 As the door swung inward, cold, foul air slithered out. Behind me I
could hear Boyd barking as if possessed.

 The odor of putrefaction can be altered by the mode of death, sweetened
by some poisons, tinted with pear or almond or garlic by others. It can be retarded by chemicals,
augmented by insect activity. But the essence is unmistakable, a heavy, fetid mix that heralds
the presence of rotting flesh.

 Something dead lay in that alcove.

 We entered and circled left, keeping to the wall as we had in the outer
chamber. Five feet in, my beam caught an irregularity on the floor.

 Crowe saw it at the same time.

 We focused our lights on a patch of coarse, dark soil.

 Wordlessly, I handed my Maglite to Crowe and pulled a collapsible spade
from my backpack. Keeping my left hand on the stone wall, I squatted and scraped at the ground
with the side of the blade.

 Crowe holstered her gun, hooked her hat to her belt, and trained twin
beams on the ground before me.

 The stain gave way easily, revealing a boundary between freshly turned
earth and hard-packed floor. The smell of decay increased as I lifted soil and laid it to the
side.

 Within minutes I hit something soft and pale blue.

 “Looks like denim.” Crowe’s eyes glistened, and her skin gleamed amber
in the pale yellow light.

 I followed the faded fabric, lengthening the opening.

 Levi’s, contoured around a scarecrow leg. I worked my way down to a
shriveled brown foot, angled ninety degrees at the ankle.

 “That’s it.” Crowe’s voice caused my hand to jump.

 “What?”

 “This is no airplane passenger.”

 “No.”

 “I don’t want a bad crime scene. We’re shut down until I have a
warrant.”

 I didn’t argue. The victim in that pit deserved to have his or her
story told in court. I would do nothing to compromise a potential prosecution.

 I rose and tapped my spade against the wall, carefully removing
adhering soil. Then I folded the blade, stuck it in my pack, and reached for my light.

 On the hand off, the beam shot across the alcove and glinted off
something in the farthest recess.