Whispers of the Dead (27 page)

I
A large insect was mashed against the glass in a tangle of legs and
wings. I stared at it, feeling the urgency begin to coalesce. Without
thinking what I was doing, I stamped hard on the brake.
Paul braced himself against the dashboard as he was flung against
his seatbelt. He stared at me in bewilderment as the car screeched to
a halt.
'Jesus, David!' He looked round, trying to see why we'd stopped.
'What's wrong?'
I didn't answer. I sat gripping the steering wheel, my heart bumping
against my ribs. I was still staring at the windscreen. The
dragonfly was big, almost as long as my finger. It was badly mangled,
but I could still make out the tiger-striped thoracic markings. Its eyes
were unmistakable, just as JoshTalbot had said.
The electric blue of Epiaeschna heros.
A swamp darner.
Paul was looking at me as though I'd gone mad as I put the car into
reverse.
'What is it? What have you seen?'
'I'm not sure.'
I twisted round in my seat to look through the rear window,
scanning the woods on my side as I backed up the road.Talbot had
said swamp darners liked wet, wooded habitats. And amongst all the
insects, there had been a blue sparkle in the trees I'd been too
distracted to notice. Not consciously, at least. Just look at those eyes! Incredible, aren't they? On a sunny day you can spot them a mile away.
He'd been right.
I pulled over on to the bank beside the road. Leaving the engine
running, I got out and went to stand on the edge of the woods. A
green, outdoor silence enveloped me. Sunlight shafted down
between the tree trunks and branches, picking out mats of wild
flowers growing through the grass.
I saw nothing.
'David, for God's sake will you tell me what's going on?'
Paul was standing by the open passenger door. The sour taste of
anticlimax was in my mouth. 'That's a swamp darner on the
windscreen. The same as the nymph we found in Harper's casket. I
thought. . .'
I tailed off, embarrassed. / thought I might have seen more of them. It seemed far-fetched now.
'Sorry,' I said, and turned to go back to the car.
And saw a glint of blue among the green.
'There.' I pointed, my heart thudding. 'By the fallen pine.'
The dragonfly zigzagged through patches of dappled sunlight, blue
eyes shining like neon. As though they'd chosen that moment to
appear, now I picked out others amongst the trees.
'I see them.' Paul was staring into the woods, blinking as though
just waking up. 'You think it's important?'
There was a tentative, almost pleading note to his voice, and I
hated myself for raising his hopes. Swamp darners or not, York
wouldn't have left Noah Harper's body so close to a road. And even
if he had, I couldn't see how it would help Sam. Yet we knew York
had headed out this way in the ambulance, and now here were the
dragonflies as well. That couldn't just be coincidence.
Could it?
'Talbot said they like standing water, didn't he?' Paul said, with an
excitement born of desperation. 'There must be some round here
somewhere, a lake or pond. Do you have a map in the car?'
'Not of the mountains.'
He ran his hands through his hair. 'There's got to be something!
Perhaps a slow moving creek or stream . . .'
I was beginning to wish I'd not said anything. The mountains
covered over half a million acres of wilder ness. The dragonflies could
be migrating, for all I knew; might already be miles from wherever
they'd hatched.
Still...
I looked round. A little further down the road I could see what
looked like a turning on to a track.
'Why don't we take a look down there?' I said.
Paul nodded, eager to seize even the slimmest hope. I felt another
stab of guilt, knowing we were probably just clutching at straws. As
he got back into the car I picked the dead dragonfly from the windscreen.
When I turned on the wipers the water jets sluiced the
remains from the glass, and it was as though it had never been there.
The turning was little more than a dirt track running off through
the trees. It didn't even merit a layer of gravel, and I had to slow to
a crawl along the rutted, muddy surface. Branches and shrubs
scratched at the windows. They grew thicker with every yard, until
eventually I was forced to stop. The way ahead was completely
blocked, maples and birches fighting for space with straggly laurel
bushes. Wherever the track might have once led, we weren't going
any further.
Paul banged the dashboard with frustration.'Goddammit!'
He climbed out of the car. I did the same, forcing open the door
against the push of branches. I looked round, hoping to catch a
glimpse of another swamp darner, anything that would tell me this
wasn't a waste of time. But the woods were mockingly empty.
Paul's shoulders had slumped in defeat as he contemplated the
enclosing tangle of trees. The hope that had briefly fired him up had
burned itself out.
'This is useless,' he said, his face a carving of despair. 'We're miles
from where York abandoned the ambulance. Hell, we're almost back
at where he had the accident. We're wasting our time.'
I almost gave up then. Almost got back in the car, accepted that I'd
over-reacted. But Tom's words came back to me: You've got good instincts, David. You should learn to trust them more.
For all my doubts, my instincts still told me this was important.
'Just give me a minute.'
The branches overhead whispered as a breeze disturbed them,
then fell silent again. I went to where a rotting tree trunk sprouted
pale, plate-like fungi, and climbed on to it. The vantage point made
little difference. Except for the overgrown track we'd followed there
was nothing to see but trees. I was about to get down again when the
branches overhead stirred and rustled as the breeze returned.
And then I caught it.
The faint, almost sweet taint of decomposing flesh.
I turned my face to the breeze. 'Can you . . .'
'I smell it.'
There was a tightness to his voice. It was an odour both of us were
too familiar with to mistake. Then the breeze died, and the air held
just the normal scents of the forest.
Paul looked round frantically. 'Did you get where it was coming
from?'
I pointed across the hillside, in the direction the breeze seemed to
have been blowing from. 'I think it was that way'
Without a word, he strode off through the woods. I gave the car a
last glance, then left it and hurried after him. The going was difficult.
There was no path or trail, and neither of us was dressed for hiking.
Branches plucked at us as we picked our way along the uneven
ground, the thickets of bushes making it impossible to keep to a
straight line. For a while we were able to use the car to keep our
bearings, but once that was out of sight we had to rely on guesswork.
'If we go much further we're going to get lost,' I panted, when
Paul stopped to disentangle his jacket from a low branch. 'There's no
point just wandering about without knowing where we're going.'
He scanned the trees around us, chest rising and falling as he
gnawed at his lip. Desperate as he was for anything that would lead
him to York and Sam, he knew as well as I did that it might just have
been carrion we'd caught wind of.
But before either of us could say anything else the branches
around us shivered as the breeze picked up. We exchanged a look as
we caught the odour again, stronger than ever.
If it was carrion it was something big.
Paul picked up a handful of pine needles and tossed them into the
air, watching which way they were blown. 'That way.'
We set off again, with more confidence this time. The smell of
decay was noticeable even when the breeze dropped now. You don't
need a detector to smell this, Tom. As though to confirm we were heading
in the right direction I caught a metallic shimmer as a dragonfly
flashed through the trees up ahead.
Then we saw the fence.
It was partly hidden by scrub pine and bushes, eight feet high
wooden slats topped with razor wire. The slats were rotten, and what
looked like a much older chain-link fence ran round the outside,
rusted and sagging.
Paul seemed charged with an almost feverish energy as we began
to pick our way along the boundary. A little further along a pair of
old stone gateposts had been incorporated into the fence, now
blocked off with wooden slats. The ground in front was overgrown,
but deep parallel grooves were still visible.
'Wheel ruts,' Paul said. 'If there're gateposts there must've been a
road of some sort. Could be the same track we were following.'
If it was it hadn't been used in a long time.
The smell of decomposition was much stronger now, but neither
of us made any comment. There was no need. Paul stepped over the
sagging chain-link fence and took hold of one of the wooden slats.
There was a splintering crack as the rotten wood came away in his
hands.
'Wait, we need to tell Gardner,' I said, reaching for my phone.
'And say what?' He wrenched at the fence, grunting with
exertion. 'You think he's going to drop everything and come running
because we smelled something dead?'
He kicked at a slat until it broke, then began furiously working at
another, prying it loose from a stubborn nail with a loud creak.
Bushes poked through the gap from the other side, obscuring whatever
else might be through there. Tearing away the last few splinters
of wood, he spared me a brief glance.
'You don't have to come with me.'
He began to climb through the fence. Within seconds there were
just waving branches to show where he'd been.
I hesitated. No one knew where we were, and God only knew
what lay behind the fence. But I couldn't let Paul do this alone.
I squeezed through the gap after him.
My heart jumped as something caught hold of my jacket. I tugged
at it in a panic until I saw I'd only snagged it on a nail. I pulled free
and carried on. Bushes crowded right up to the fence on this side.
Ahead of me I could hear snapping and rustling as Paul forced his
way through them. I followed as best I could, shielding my face with
one hand as twigs clawed at my eyes.
Then I stepped clear and almost walked into him.
We'd emerged into a large garden. Or, rather, what had once been
a garden; now it was a wilderness in its own right. Ornamental
shrubs and trees had run riot, crowding each other in the fight for
space. We stood in the shade of a huge magnolia, the scent from its
waxy white flowers cloying and sweet. Directly ahead of us stood an
old laburnum, heavy branches dripping with clusters of yellow.
Underneath it was a pond.
It must have once been the garden's centrepiece, but now it was
stagnant and rank. Its edges were slowly drying out and choked with
reeds, while the viscous green water was filmed with scum. A cloud
of midge-like insects danced above its surface like dust motes in the
sunlight.
Feeding on them were the dragonflies.
There were dozens of them. Hundreds. The air hummed with
their wings. Here and there I saw the iridescent colours of other,
smaller species, but it was the tiger-striped swamp darners who ruled,
eyes shining like sapphires as they darted in an intricate ballet above
the water.
I shifted to get a better view and felt something snap under my
foot. Glancing down I saw a pale, green-white stick in the grass. No,
two sticks, I thought. And then, like a picture coming into focus,
what I was seeing resolved itself into the twin bones of a human
forearm.
I slowly stepped back. The body lay half hidden in the undergrowth
by my feet. It was fully skeletonized, shoots of bright spring
grass already growing through the moss-covered bones.
Black female, adolescent: the assessment came automatically. As
though it had been waiting for that moment, now the smell of
decomposition reasserted itself over the thick scent of magnolia.
Beside me, Paul spoke in a whisper. 'Oh, my God . . .'
I slowly lifted my gaze. The dragonflies weren't the only
inhabitants of this place.
The garden was full of corpses.
They were in the grass, under the trees, in the undergrowth. Many
were little more than stripped bones lying in the greenery, but some
were more recent; leathery intestines and cartilage still host to flies
and maggots. No wonder none of York's earlier victims had been
found.
He'd created his own body farm.
Paul's voice was unsteady.'Over there. There's a house.'
Beyond the pond the ground rose into a tree-covered hillside.
Towards its top, the angled lines of a roof were visible through the
branches. I grabbed hold of Paul's arm as he started towards it.
'What are you doing?'
He pulled free.'Sam might be in there!'
'I know, but we've got to tell Gardner--'
'So tell him,' he said, breaking into a run.
I swore, the phone held in my hand. Gardner needed to know
about this, but I had to stop Paul from doing anything stupid.
I set off after him.
The corpses were everywhere. They seemed to have been left with
no pattern or purpose, as though York had simply dumped them here
to rot. Dragonflies swooped and hovered as I ran through the garden,
indifferent to the death all around. I saw a swamp darner gently
fanning its wings as it rested on a skeletal finger, beautiful but alien. When another thrummed close to my head I batted it away in
revulsion.
Paul was still ahead of me, heading for the building we'd seen
through the branches. Built on the sloping hillside, it rose up like a
cliff, a sprawling timber structure three storeys high. I could see now
that it was far too big to be a house, more like an old hotel of some
sort. It must have been imposing once, but neglect had made it as
rotten as the bodies in its grounds. Its foundations had shifted, giving
it a skewed, twisted aspect. Holes gaped in the shingle roof, and
cobwebbed windows stared sightlessly from the weathered grey face.
Leaning against one corner like a drunk was an ancient weeping
willow, its branches draped over the walls as though to hide their
decay.
Paul had reached a weed-choked terrace that ran along this entire
side of the building. I was close behind him now, but not close
enough to stop him as he ran to a pair of boarded-up French doors
and wrenched on the handles. They didn't open, but the rattle
shattered the garden's silence.
I pulled him aside. 'What are you doing? Jesus, do you want to get
yourself killed?'
But one look at his face gave me the answer: he didn't expect to
find Sam alive. And if she wasn't, he didn't care about himself.
Pushing me away, he ran towards the corner of the building where
the old willow leaned against the walls. I couldn't let him get too far
ahead, but I daren't wait any longer to call Gardner. I dialled as I ran,
relieved to see that there was a weak signal even out here. It was
more than I'd hoped for, but I swore when the TBI agent's number
went straight to voicemail. There was no time to try Jacobsen; Paul
had already vanished under the willow's trailing branches. Gasping
out the words, I described where we were as best I could, then
snapped my phone shut and sprinted after him.
Up close, the building's rot was obvious. Its wooden siding was as
soft as balsa, honeycombed with tiny holes.Thinking about the cloud
of insects the dragonflies had been feeding on, I remembered what Josh Talbot had said: Swamp darners are partial to winged termites.
They'd found a plentiful supply here.
But I'd more pressing concerns just then. Paul was in sight again