Dark Alchemy (14 page)

“What the hell were you doing in my trailer? Looking for money?”

“No. He wants some antique you have. Says it looks like a compass. Gold. Must be worth a lot of money.”

Petra's gaze flicked outside the fogged window. “You know that there are park rangers out there? I could have you arrested.”

“Please.” Cal looked at her with traumatized eyes. “Arrest me. Just get your coyote off me. He's standing on my bladder, and I really have to pee.”

Petra nodded at Sig. “Good dog.”

Sig bared his teeth.

“So you came back to search my truck, is that it?”

“No. Like I said, I came to ask for your help.”

Petra stared at him. ­“People don't normally grant favors to burglars.”

“I'm sorry. Really. I didn't have much choice in that.”

“What do you want? Money for meth?”

“No. I need your help looking for the body that the guy in the bar was talking about. On Rutherford's ranch.” Cal's mouth thinned. “I think . . . I think it might belong to one of my friends.”

“Why do you think that I can help you?”

“I saw this thing on TV about geologists looking for Hoffa's body under Giants Stadium.” Cal's Adam's apple bobbed. “You can—­you can do that, right?”

Petra lifted an eyebrow. “Maybe. But you're gonna owe me.”

 

Chapter Thirteen

Body Count

“D
o you see anything yet?”

Cal drifted along in Petra's wake, staring at the glowing light on the display of the ground penetrating radar cart. It was already beginning to dim under the half charge she'd given it at the ranger station. The cart bounced over ruts and bent grasses at the edge of one of Rutherford's fields. There was no sign of Rutherford's ranch hands in the waxing moonlight, but the shadows and movements of the breeze made Petra jump. The light was enough to see by on this clear night. Enough to be seen.

“Nothing yet,” Petra hissed. “You're supposed to be keeping watch.”

“Your coyote seems to have that under control.”

Sig walked ahead of them, sniffing in the breeze. His ears stood straight and alert as he scanned the darkness.

“Look, I don't want to get your hopes up,” Petra said. They'd been out here for hours, pacing behind the cart and looking over their shoulders. “This could take days, under even the best of conditions. We have no idea where Jeff found that body.”

“We've gotta try,” Cal insisted.

Petra was inclined to agree, if only for curiosity's sake. She'd come partly because Cal had asked her, and partly because she wondered if the body he'd seen really resembled the one she'd found on the ridge. One body in such a bizarre state was a fluke, but more?

She frowned as she stared at the readout monitor. The striations of the ground were odd here. The layers of soil scanned more opaque than most, but she thought she saw more black areas than she should.

“What is it?” Cal bounced on the toes of his boots.

“I dunno. This land is weird.” She pointed to the voids in the scan. “It looks like tunnels.”

“Prairie dogs?” Cal suggested helpfully.

“No. Bigger than that. Almost like a cave system. They're all over here.” She chewed on her lip. “Almost looks like a mine, but less regular. More organic.” She wished that she had permission to be here, to ask questions. This might be an interesting geological feature to map.

“Hey. Your coyote is freaking out.”

Petra looked up from the fading monitor. Yards ahead, Sig was clawing at the ground, tossing clods of earth.

She shrugged. “Well, we could try looking
there
.”

She dragged the cart to where Sig was excavating. He whimpered and gave ground to the cart, but paced in a circle as Petra scanned the earth. She squinted at the readout. A spot had formed a few feet below on the scan, the readout showing broken sediment and disturbed earth.

“Huh.”

“What is it?”

“There might be something there.”

“How do we tell for sure?”

Petra looked at Cal with enduring patience. “We dig. Go get the shovels out of the truck.”

Cal skittered away to the dim hulk of the Bronco. Petra fingered the keys in her pocket. She liked the kid, but she didn't trust him enough to leave the keys in the ignition. So far, he hadn't done much to earn it.

Sig didn't wait for Cal. He tore into the ground as if someone had buried his favorite lunch meat. Petra picked up a clump of earth. It felt loose and granular, not hard and packed down like the rest of the soil here. It had been moved recently, since the last time it had rained. Water hadn't had the opportunity to seal the clay together and drive the oxygen out. It made for easy digging, and Petra became more convinced that there was something below.

By the time Cal had brought the shovels back from the truck, Sig had sunk up to his shoulders in his hole. Petra whistled for him to come out, and he clambered up in a spray of dirt. She wrinkled her nose, vowing to wash him.

Cal clumsily set his shovel into the ground. He and Petra worked in silence for a few minutes, until her shovel blade struck a tree root.

But there were no trees in this part of the field.

Petra knelt, brushed the dirt away from a pale shape that gleamed in the moonlight. She sucked in her breath.

“What is it?” Cal croaked.

Petra stood back, so that her shadow didn't interrupt the meager light. The claw of a hand reached upward in the soil, frozen in the dirt. But it wasn't simply a hand. Bone grew over a watch and curled in a delicate lattice between the last fingers, a webbing that had been shattered by the shovel blade.

Petra held her breath. She could still hear the watch ticking. Or maybe it was her heart. She glanced sidelong at Cal.

Cal sat on his ass on the ground. He was shaking.

“That's human?” he whispered.

“It looks like it. Sort of.”

He let out a quavering breath, sweat glistening on his forehead. Petra sat back on her heels beside him.

“There's a watch,” Petra said. She didn't have much interest in poking and prodding the body, but it was clear that Cal needed her to be in charge, here.

“A watch,” he echoed.

“Yeah.” Petra squinted at it. “It looks like a man's watch. Silver with a black dial.” She leaned forward, rubbed at the broken crystal. “Has a Jolly Roger on the face.”

Cal swallowed. “Adam never wore a watch. Some Taoist shit about being in the moment. It's not him.”

“That's good, right?”

Cal shook his head. “Not really. That Jolly Roger watch belongs to one of Stroud's other guys. There's gonna be hell to pay.”

Petra reached for her cell phone.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm going to take a picture, for evidence. And then I'm calling for help.”

Cal blinked at the flash. “You can't do that.”

Petra stared at him. “There's a body. We have to report it.”

“The county sheriff's office won't touch it. This is Rutherford's land.” He looked at her incredulously, as if she was just plain stupid.

“Yeah, well. I think I know some ­people who will be interested in a calcinated body.” Petra dialed Mike's cell phone number. It rang five times before a muzzy voice picked up.

“Yell-­ow.” Stubble scraped the receiver.

“Mike, this is Petra. I, uh, have a problem.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Petra heard bedsprings creak, and she imagined that he was sitting up and looking at his clock. “It's three in the morning. And you're supposed to be bunking with Maria.”

“You know that body that Jeff was talking about at the Compostela?”

“Yeah. Do I really want to know where you're going with this?”

“The Feds might. Cal and I just—­”

“Who's Cal?”

“A kid from town. His friends were missing. Long story. But Cal and I are looking at a calcinated body at the edge of one of the fields. Like the one from Specimen Ridge. I'll write down the GPS coordinates, but I want to know what you want us to do—­should we cover it up or leave it be or . . .” Petra realized that she was babbling.

Mike cut her off. His voice was suddenly steely and alert. “Are you at Rutherford's ranch?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll talk to the Feds about getting a warrant. Get the hell out of there, now.”

“But—­”

“Leave it and get out, now. It's not safe.”

“I—­”

“Now.”

“Uh, okay.” Petra shut the phone off and stood, grabbing the shovels. There was something in Mike's voice that chilled her. As much as she resented being told what to do, she had to defer to his authority in law enforcement issues. And this was the second body she'd found in a day. Not a good start.

“What happened?” Cal asked.

“Get the gear and get into the truck. We're leaving.”

She gazed out at the moonlight horizon, blowing out her breath in frustration. No matter what rational thought demanded, none of the rules seemed to apply here.

F
uck the rules.

Today was going to be different. No more stonewalling, no more ignored questions. No one was giving Petra any answers, so she would damn well dig up her own.

She'd risen early, before light crept into the window. She hadn't slept, anyway, and figured that there was no point in lying in bed, stewing, for another ­couple of hours. Nor had there been a point in knocking on Maria's door in the middle of the night, so she went back home after she and Cal unearthed the body. She'd spoken to Mike when she'd returned to the trailer, forwarding the smeary shot she'd taken in the field that looked like a scarecrow Halloween decoration. Sort of. It was blurry and dark, and she had to convince herself really hard to see the likeness of a body. He'd promised to contact the Feds, who could then get a warrant. But he couldn't say exactly how long that would take.

By dawn, she was on the road to Yellowstone, coffee from Bear's deli in hand. Sig rode shotgun, looking pissed. The coyote had spent most of the night scratching and chewing his skin, and Petra had found her legs covered with dozens of tiny round red flea bites in the morning. Fortunately, Bear's convenience store stocked flea collars. Petra had gone three rounds with Sig in the front seat of the Bronco before she'd managed to get the damn thing on him. She'd finally distracted him with a piece of donut and wrestled it around his neck. She didn't know how long it would stay, since he kept trying to bite at it and slide his paws under the buckle to get it off.

“Sig, quit being a drama queen. If you're going to act like a domesticated animal, you have to take the bad with the good. And, yeah, you're getting a bath when we get back.”

Sig cast her a dirty look with half-­slitted golden eyes, as if to say:
I am not a domestic animal.

Petra didn't see Mike's Jeep as she passed the ranger station, which was a good thing. Maybe he was doing something useful, like getting a judge out of bed. Besides which, she didn't want him giving her grief about going back up on Specimen Ridge.

This early in the morning, there was no sign of tourists. The trail to the ridge had been obstructed with an orange blockade and sign that said
CLOSED FOR
MAINTENANCE
. She sidestepped it and retraced her footsteps from yesterday.

She knew that there had to be a rational explanation for what had happened to that body. Was there something about the ground, some toxin or chemical stew in a mudpot that could cause petrification at an accelerated rate? Was this simply a victim of some odd medical illness? Petra remembered reading an article in a magazine about a biological mutation that caused excess skeletal bone growth. She couldn't remember the name of it, but it was worth looking up. Mike had to have an Internet connection at the ranger station.

And more data would yield her answer.

She climbed up the ridge, chiseled away some more samples from the petrified trees for comparison. They came away in her hands as thin and brittle as mica. Hopefully, the bones of the trees could tell her about the bones of the body. She worked until she had dozens of samples from as many different trees as she could find. Sig slunk behind her, as if embarrassed that any other wildlife might spot him sporting a flea collar.

She expected to need to use her GPS to identify the exact location of the body, but the National Guard had left behind enough markers. Tracks had made a muddy mess of the trail. Yellow caution tape surrounded the pine tree, cordoning off a hole about three feet deep.

Petra began collecting soil samples from the perimeter. She didn't see any evidence of a mudpot that could be stewing toxins, but that wasn't to say that none existed. Mudpots were vents of geothermal pressure and gas that superheated water and earth around them, giving the effect of a witch's bubbling cauldron. Yellowstone was most famous for the Artist Paint Pot and the Fountain Paint Pots. But mudpots, like waterfalls, were too numerous to be completely cataloged in a park measuring nearly three thousand five hundred square miles.

She approached the hole cautiously, stepping in between the pine tree roots to get a better look. Curiosity had overwhelmed any sense of fear. ­People scared Petra—­they were volatile, unpredictable. But the natural world could always be explained. It behaved according to established laws that didn't change. Petra could play by those rules.

She poked around the bottom of the hole, filling her vials. The Guard must have been here for a good while with their shovels. Her eyes glittered in delight when she saw something white and shiny at the bottom of the hole—­a fragment of bone. She tucked it away in a sample bottle and climbed out, exhilarated. She'd make sense of this, one way or another.

With a cranky coyote in tow, she clomped back down the ridge. Cranking the ignition on the Bronco, she drove back toward the ranger station. By this civilized hour, cars were in the parking lot—­including Mike's Jeep. He was standing outside the station, talking into his cell phone, when Petra saw him.

Mike clicked off his cell phone. “Been trying to reach you.”

Petra shrugged. “Reception must be spotty.”

He frowned at her. “Look, I'm not trying to be an asshole, here. But there are rules, and we've got to follow procedures.”

Petra spread her hands, incredulous. “Mike. We found a
body
.”

“Yeah, and if we want that body to stick to Sal Rutherford, we have to dot all our I's and cross our T's.” He put his hands on his gun belt, exasperated. “You don't get it. This is like trying to take down Jesus Christ.”

Petra shook her head, and she could feel heat rising behind her freckles. “You're right. I don't get it. I don't get how meth heads and cattle barons run the Wild West. I don't get how the local sheriff's office doesn't get their hands or their cars dirty. I don't get how ­people just disappear.
I don't get it.
”

“Hey. I'm on your side. Honest,” Mike said quietly.

She looked up at him, and there was such sincerity and hurt in his expression that she felt a pang of regret.

She cast her eyes down. “I'm sorry. I know that this isn't your fault. You've done nothing but try to help me.”