The Botanist (27 page)

Chapter 41

Cody slammed the heel of his hand into the top of the steering wheel in frustration. He was being followed. He didn’t have time for this. It took a while to be sure, but now he was certain. The winding desert road would twist, hiding the pursuing headlights from view, but they always reappeared, staying far enough behind him that he couldn’t tell what kind of car it was.

Cody needed to know who it was and what they were up to sooner rather than later. He was not in the mood for games. His adrenaline was so charged after his shouting match with his father, he knew he’d never be able to go back to his desk and stare at reports. Rather, he decided to go check out his lead at the dig site. Sure, it was dark, but now was as good a time as ever. At least he’d have something to report back to the captain.

A particularly deep curve in the road gave him his opportunity to confront whoever his tail was. He put on his breaks, slowing to just over twenty miles per hour, and waited for his pursuer to come around the bend.

Just as he expected, they came barreling around the curb at fifty or sixty miles per hour, nearly slamming into him. The squeal of brakes and the screech of tires on the pavement combined as Frank’s car swerved to miss his and spun out into a near-perfect donut across the deserted highway.

With a sigh, Cody pulled onto the opposite shoulder and got out of his Jeep. Frank jumped out of his car like a spry cat.

“Cody, what the hell was
that?
I could have hit you! I could have killed you!”

“And I could have killed you.”

Frank blinked and snapped his mouth shut. Both he and Court, who’d come around from the passenger side of the car, looked confused.

“What are you two thinking, trying to be all sneaky and following me in a strange car on
this
highway in the middle of the night? With everything that’s going on, what if I’d freaked out and gone all trigger-happy on you?”

Frank’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. “I . . . we . . .”

“We weren’t trying to be sneaky,” Court supplied lamely.

Cody glared at him.

“Okay, maybe a little bit, but where are you going, Cody? We saw you pull out of your parents’ neighborhood. What’s going on?”

Cody affected a nonchalant expression. “Nowhere. Just a midnight drive.”

Both of them glared thunderbolts at him.

“You’re allowed to make fun of us, Cody,” Frank said, “but don’t insult our intelligence. We’ve all known each other too long.”

Cody sighed. Frank was right. He owed them the truth. At least.

“I can’t wait until morning, guys. I just can’t.”

The three of them gazed steadily at one another for several seconds.

“Then let us back you up,” Frank said.

“I thought you were pissed at me, Frank.”

“No—”

Cody glared.

“Okay, maybe I was, but . . . well I wasn’t really mad. I just thought you handled things in a . . . less than professional manner.”

“And now?”

“We all lost Tom, Cody. We’re all dealing with it. Besides, this bastard is hurting people in
our
town. Don’t you think we want to get him just as bad as you do? Don’t you think we want to find Alex alive, for
your
sake, if no other?”

Cody was touched by that, though his pride wouldn’t allow him to say so.

“We’re your friends, Cody, and the three of us are the detectives in this town. Protect and serve, right? That includes the town as a whole, individual citizens, and any outsiders who might happen to be here.”

Cody didn’t know what to say.

“Look, if you’re going after this guy, we’re going with you. Either that, or we can cuff you, throw you in the trunk, and cart you back to the captain as excess baggage.”

Cody rolled his eyes. “All right. I know where I’m going. Just follow me.”

Frank
and Court followed Cody out into the desert, but Cody didn’t go to the dig site where Alex had disappeared. Rather, he led them to where he had first discovered the mass grave. Since then, makeshift roads had been set up for the coroners and other emergency vehicles, so this time he drove right up to it.

He got out of his Jeep and pulled an emergency pack from behind the back seat, complete with a water bottle, beef jerky, a flashlight, a coil of rope, and a few other supplies. He crammed his arms through the straps as Frank and Court pulled up behind him and parked.

“What’re we doing here?” Frank asked as they exited the car.

“Looking into something I found just before I discovered the grave. I haven’t thought much about it since. It seemed irrelevant.”

“And now?” Frank asked.

“I think it may be a way into his lair. I think the tunnel I saw may be how he was moving around and tending to the graves.” He hadn’t really formed the thought until Frank asked, but he’d suspected it for a while now.

“But if it’s big enough for him to travel through, why haven’t we explored it? Why hasn’t anyone even mentioned it?” Court clicked the flashlight Frank had given him on and off, checking the batteries.

“It doesn’t look big enough for a person to fit through. But up until Alex was taken, we didn’t realize he had some kind of underground passageway either. No one would have thought of it. And, honestly, I could be wrong. I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since he snatched her. This way.”

They followed him in silence. Alex’s abduction site was half a mile south and fairly well lit. Here, the only thing they could see was what their flashlights revealed.

“Who goes there?”

All three men swerved toward the voice. Cody wrenched his Glock from its holster and pointed it in the direction of the sound. Frank and Court’s hands went to their guns, though they didn’t pull them.

Cody’s flashlight found a frightened-looking man who seemed familiar. The second the man saw Cody’s gun, his hands flew up in front of him.

“Whoa, whoa! Don’t shoot.” He peered at them through the darkness. “Detective Oliver, is that you?”

Cody was taken by surprise and it took him a moment to answer. “Yes.”

“Mike Ware. We met yesterday. I’m the foreman at the dig site.”

Cody did remember him, now, and lowered his gun. “What are you doing out here, Mike?”

“There are a lot of extra people running around town, Detective. Plenty of them are trying to get a peek at the crime scene. That’s your arena, and I’m sure your men are efficient, but if anyone should slip past your cops, there’s a lot of expensive equipment out here. I’ve been sleeping out here the past three nights. Just have to protect my livelihood, you understand?”

Cody supposed he did, but he wasn’t sure how to feel about Mike sleeping out here with a potential killer nearby. He didn’t know if the man was a little dim, a little arrogant, or just insanely brave. At the least, he was another civilian who could potentially get hurt, and Cody didn’t want the responsibility for him.

“My apologies Mike. For the gun. We didn’t know you were out here. We’re just checking into something.”

Mike pressed his thumb and forefinger to different buttons on his watch. “At this hour?”

“It couldn’t wait.”

Mike shrugged. “I’m just dozing in the cab of my truck if you need anything.”

“We won’t,” Cody said quickly. “Please, go back to sleep.”

Mike nodded and got back into his truck, closing the door loudly. Cody hoped the man would stay in his truck and out of harm’s way.

He led Frank and Court over the now-familiar path to the mass grave. The bodies had been removed, of course. The site had been photographed, sampled, and searched a dozen different ways. It now looked like brown mulch—soil that had been recently turned and was ready for planting. He shuddered at the thought.

Cody easily hoisted himself up to the shallow outcropping. Once there, he pulled the soil away from the wooden planks and removed them, shining his light down into the narrow tunnel.

“This is it?” Frank asked from beside him once he and Court had made it up. “Cody, I don’t think
we’ll
fit in there, much less a guy who’s supposedly twice our size.”

Cody unwound the rope from his pack and tied the end of it around his wrist. “I think I’ll fit; it’ll just be tight.”

Frank played his flashlight over the narrow tunnel. “But it curves to the right and disappears. How do we know it doesn’t dead end two feet after the bend?”

“We don’t. That’s what I have to find out. Here. Hold the rope. If it’s nothing, you can hoist me back out.”

“And what would you have done if we weren’t here?” Court asked, sounding falsely casual.

“I’d have tied it to something.”

Court looked around at the smooth, lumpy angles of the mountain. “To what?”

Cody’s annoyance flared. “I’d have managed.”

“Uh-huh.”

Brushing it off with a roll of his eyes, Cody grasped the upper lip of the tunnel and swung his legs into it. “All right, going in.”

“Wait, Cody.” Frank put a hand on Cody’s shoulder. “We need to have more of a plan than this. After you go around that bend, we’ll be able to hear you for a few feet at most. How are we supposed to know if you’re in trouble, or if you need us to pull you out?”

“I suppose we’ll have to go with rope-tugs. You tug once to ask how I’m doing. One tug from me means I’m fine, but gonna keep going. Two tugs means pull me out. Three means . . . you two should come down.” He glanced at his friends; both wore worried frowns. “Any other contingencies?”

They both shook their heads and Cody slid into the tunnel. Though he’d never been prone to claustrophobia, this was one scenario where he could imagine it. It wasn’t tight over his legs or hips, but his shoulders brushed both sides. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs and telling himself that he could breathe; no problem. He managed to make himself believe it, but the illusion of breathlessness was definitely there.

Cody scooted downward in the tunnel by straightening his legs, digging his heels in, then wriggling his butt down until his bent knees brushed the top of the tunnel. Then he’d straighten his legs and scoot some more.

The going was agonizingly slow. It felt like hours before he reached the bend. Once he got around it, he wanted to shine his flashlight down the tunnel, to see if he could tell how far it went. But his flashlight was in his hand, above his head, and there wasn’t enough room between the top of the tunnel and his head to bring the flashlight or his hand past his face. He settled for turning the light toward his toes and trying to see what he could. The tunnel didn’t look like it ended any time soon, and up ahead, Cody could swear it got bigger.

Looking forward to that, he scooted down farther. Five minutes later, the tunnel opened up considerably. Cody couldn’t sit up completely, but he could come up on his elbows. He scooted a few more feet, then tried to sit up. Straightening his legs, he found nothing. His feet had gone over some kind of precipice. He panicked. The tunnel was wide enough for him to turn over now, which he did, digging his fingers into the dirt below him to keep from going over the edge, even though he wasn’t in real danger of falling. Only his feet and the bottom of his calves hung over the edge of the tunnel. He pulled his feet back and sat up. He couldn’t sit up to his full height, but if he hunched his shoulders and ducked his neck, he could almost attain mobility.

Sitting on his backside, Cody pulled his knees into his chest and ducked his head. He brought his flashlight up to see what he could see. His mouth dropped open. This was not the edge of a cliff he’d found; the tunnel emptied into a large room. The “precipice” he’d been afraid of was merely the end of the tunnel, with the floor three feet below him.

Cody scooted to the edge and hopped down into the cavern. It was huge—easily the size of his entire apartment—and black as tar, other than what wandered into the beam of his flashlight. A passage hewn out of the rock on the other side of the room led deeper into the mountain. It was spacious, closer to the size of a sewer than to that of the tunnel he’d just exited.

Cody turned and called up the tunnel. “Frank, can you hear me?”

A muffled response came, but Cody couldn’t make it out. Instead, he grasped the rope and yanked distinctly three times. Several minutes passed before the indistinct tugs of someone descending came. When they did, Cody untied the rope from his wrist and went to explore the perimeter of the chamber he was in. There wasn’t much to see.

When both Frank and Court slithered unceremoniously out of the tunnel, Cody went to stand by them. Frank let out a low whistle.

“No offense, Cody, but I really hate it when you’re right.”

Cody shook his head. “Right there with you. You guys want to keep going?”

“We’re here,” Court said. “We might as well.”

“Do you think both women are down here?” Frank asked.

“I do,” Cody answered. “The question is how big
here
is. It might take some time to explore all of it.”

Frank un-holstered his gun, turned off the safety, and pointed his flashlight at the passageway on the opposite side of the room. “Then we’d better get started.”

Chapter 42

The first sensation Alex had upon waking was that of her pounding head. The throbbing reached from her forehead, just above her nose, all the way around to the nape of her neck. She had no idea where she was, or how she’d gotten here. She couldn’t string together enough thoughts or images to even gather what her most recent recollection was.

Her muscles were stiff and uncooperative. She rolled over and groaned. Whatever she was laying on was rock hard and had absolutely no give. After a few minutes, the pounding in her head became less violent, though it didn’t subside altogether, and Alex pulled herself into a sitting position. The wave of dizziness that washed over her forced her to the ground again. She landed on her elbow, stubbornly refusing to lie back down. She had to figure out where she was.

“Are you okay?”

Alex jumped, inhaling sharply at the voice on her right.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Actually, I’m relieved you woke up at all. You’ve been out since he brought you here, and I was afraid you were dead.”

Alex looked around the room. It was dark, with a bit of light filtering in from somewhere, though she couldn’t identify the source. Then she realized there was a door into the chamber. An outside light spilled into the room through the bottom crack. The musty smells of dirt and plants and desert rock were all around them. Something smelled sweet as well. Sweet . . . and familiar, but Alex couldn’t put her finger on it.

The room was round, though irregularly shaped, and the walls were made of rock. Alex was lying on the hard-packed dirt ground beside a boulder that was roughly twice her size. Her right arm felt heavy, and she lifted it to find a metal shackle clamped around her wrist. It was attached to a chain that coiled near her feet, then disappeared underneath the boulder.

All she could see of the woman the voice belonged to was an indistinct silhouette, lying on the ground six feet from her on the other side of the boulder.

As she looked around, the memories came crashing back, memories of being in the desert, driving the van in grandiose figure eights. She’d gotten out. Why had she done that? She knew exactly why: because she was on the verge of a meltdown at the time. True, she’d volunteered to be bait, but as the night wore on and there was no sign of him, the stress began to grate on her.

She’d felt like the walls of the van were closing in on her. She’d had to get some air. She’d given the cops a lecture about how he wouldn’t attack her in the van, and this was a better way to catch him, but it was all crap. She’d gotten out of that van because she needed the fresh air to keep from losing it, and because she’d been feeling rebellious. Besides, the desert was full of cops, and she’d see him long before he reached her, or so she thought. Never in a million years did she imagine he would rise out of the landscape like some desert ghoul.

She’d gotten onto the boulder because from up there the breeze felt good, and she could see most of the countryside. The moon had shone eerily over the arid region, and Alex had felt calmer, more in control. She’d bandied with Cody, trying to ease his mind. She knew he was worried for her, and she felt like she was causing him way more stress than he deserved. In truth, the conversation had made her feel lighter as well.

Then something had been creeping up behind her like a giant arachnid. She’d turned to see the killer coming at her, slithering forward on his belly, using his arms to propel him forward. He’d covered his face in some kind of muck, and he’d looked like a red-eyed demon emerging from hell.

She’d screamed and tried to lunge away, but he was too close. He’d yanked her down into the earth with him, and she’d seen the surface receding, getting smaller and smaller. She’d had the sensation of the earth swallowing her whole. Then there was nothing.

Alex groaned and, confident she wouldn’t pass out again, let herself lay down on the ground. “Cody,” she muttered.

“What?” The woman’s voice was alarmed. “What was that? Did you say Cody?”

Alex sat up onto her elbow again. “Yeah. He’s probably having a coronary by now. Are you Melissa?”

“Yes! How did you know that?”

The awkwardness set in all at once. Here she was, talking to one of Cody’s girlfriends. They were in a dire situation, but Alex didn’t see why it had to be awkward for Melissa, too. She was aware of the cop-out on her part, but at this particular juncture, she didn’t care.

“He’s looking for you. Well, everyone is.”

Melissa let her breath out in a whoosh. “Well that’s a relief. The street I was nabbed on was so quiet, and I couldn’t think of a single date or appointment I had over the next few days. I had this terrifying notion that no one would realize I was missing for a week or more.”

“Don’t you have a job?” Alex asked.

“No. Full-time grad student. Don’t get me wrong; my professors would worry if I didn’t show for class, but it still might take them a week to realize anything was really wrong.”

Fully realizing that this was the most inappropriate situation imaginable in which to feel jealous, Alex pushed away her deep urge to be neurotic over whether or not she could compete with this woman for Cody’s affections. Alex was no grad student. She’d barely graduated junior college.

“Your friend—the one who was giving you rides while your car was in the shop?—she got your message and came to pick you up. She got stuck a block down at a red light but she saw him force you into his car.”

“Well that’s good.” Melissa sounded hopeful. “Uh, you know, that people are looking for me. So what happened to you?”

Alex sighed. “I was bait.”

“You were . . . and he
got
you? That’s awful.”

“It was kind of my fault actually. I did something stupid.”

“Still, that sucks. I’m sorry.”

“I am, too, but here we are.” Alex pulled herself into a full sitting position. “Has he hurt you?”

“No. He keeps walking by, but since he stashed me here, he hasn’t touched me.”

“That’s good.”

Melissa cleared her throat. “What he did to those other women, do you think he’s planning on doing that to us?”

Alex paused before speaking, telling herself not to say anything snippy. Both she and Melissa had to remain calm if they were going to make it out of this alive.

She settled on, “It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. We aren’t going to let him
do
anything to us, good or bad. We’re going to get out of here.”

“But how?” Melissa’s voice already sounded stronger than when she’d asked the question.

“Are you shackled like I am?”

“Yes.”

“Where does the chain attach to?”

“It runs under this boulder behind me.”

Alex nodded. “Mine, too.” She got up on her knees and started digging, trying to free the chain her shackle was attached to.

“What are you doing?” Melissa asked.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“How?”

“Maybe he put the boulders on top of the chains because he couldn’t attach them to the ground any other way. If that’s the case, all we have to do is free the chain.”

“What if it
is
attached under the rock?”

“If what it’s attached to is small enough, we can just dig it out and take it with us. Better than waiting here until he has the urge to fulfill one of his twisted fantasies with us.”

Melissa was silent a few seconds. Then Alex heard the unmistakable sound of her digging around her own chain. The earth was hard-packed, but Alex used her thumbs, and it soon crumbled aside in chunks.

“Try to dig in a straight line,” she told Melissa, “following the chain.”

“Why?”

“The goal is to free the chain, not displace the weight of the entire boulder.”

“Right.”

They dug in silence.