At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(23)

He looked at his watch. “Sure.”

Evan eyed the tall grasses and weeds. He was glad he’d collected his wellies from his car before they left the campus. He’d offered Addie his second pair, but she’d waved away his offer. No question, she was a lot tougher than he was.

He watched her head out. He’d never tell her, but she looked damn good in jeans and a turtleneck sweater, the puff jacket sitting snugly at the top of her hips. He caught Templeton watching her as well and had to push down his possessiveness. Addie belonged to no man. Definitely not the fancy-pants attorney she was sleeping with.

And certainly not to him.

He turned and, wincing, plunged into the rustling reeds.

Make that the sharp-bladed reeds. He’d brought the rubber boots, but what he really should have brought was a suit of armor. Still, he plowed gamely on. It was important to be a trouper. Plus, he could never say no to anything Addie suggested.

And what philologist worth his salt could turn down a treasure hunt?

Off to his right, the water sloshed against the shore, setting the reeds asway. Rain pattered on leaves, and small things rustled through the brush. Evan thought of water moccasins and copperheads and snapping turtles and kept moving.

Focus, he told himself. See this place the way the killer did. What led him here? Why did he choose this pond and this field to serve as a grave?

He paused in his search and stood still. The winter-gold grass rose high on either side of him, a wind-stirred tunnel beneath a sky of hammered pewter. The water slopped faintly against the reeds, disturbed by something in the pond. Birds cackled and fussed in the cottonwoods.

They were in an oasis of nature, surrounded on all sides by hundreds—perhaps thousands—of homes. Developments ate at these old farms with the speed and hunger of the insatiable. But here . . . here he could almost imagine himself in a different place. In an utterly different world, archaic and primal.

He turned words over in his mind like a river tumbling a stone. Water. Wind. Nature. Hunger. Destruction. Death. A thought rose, glimmered on the edge of consciousness, then vanished once again into the murk, leaving behind an unexpected feeling of unease.

The thought would return in due time. He started walking again.

When he spotted what looked like the leg bone of a deer, he almost ignored it. He pushed past, wincing as yet another razor-honed edge of sedge grass sliced his face. Much more of this and he’d look like a Maasai with tribal scarring.

“Death by a thousand cuts,” he muttered. “I thought that was metaphorical.”

He stopped. Frowned.

Prejudice, assumption, and narrow vision were the banes of any code breaker. As soon as you think you know what you’re looking for, you’re doomed.

His mind flashed to the Caistor runes, the earliest writing found in England—the runes had been carved on the ankle bone of a roe deer. Disregarding the killer’s anachronistic use of a .22 pistol, any serious rune carver would be happy for the chance to leave his message on bone.

He turned around. The femur—or whatever part of a deer it was—lay half-buried in the frozen muck. What was visible of the bone was surprisingly white beneath a thin layer of grime. Evan took pictures of the bone in situ, then snapped gloves on over his cold hands. He squatted and gently pried the bone free and turned it over in his palm.

A series of futhorc runes had been etched along the length of the bone. The very last rune, set apart from the others, was the fourth letter of the futhorc, ōs, the word for god or mouth.

Maybe he’d been right with his theory about the numbering after all.

Since Desser had died months before Talfour, it might be that the runic lines found with Talfour’s body were part of a longer piece. One that had started with Desser. Lines one through nine, presumably, since Talfour’s lines started with the tenth character.

Which would mean Evan now had the fourth line of what he was coming to suspect was the killer’s idea of a heroic epic poem.

He slid the bone into one of Addie’s paper bags, planted a flag, and continued on. But he found nothing else, and when he reached the far end of the pond, a discouraged-looking Addie stared across the water with folded arms and furrowed brow.

Deputy Templeton had remained on the other side of the pond, where he stood smoking and scrolling through something on his phone.

Evan held the bag behind him as he approached Addie.

“Nothing?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I was so sure we’d find something.”

He grinned, held up the bag, and rattled it. “O ye of little faith.”

Her expression lit, and she grabbed the bag. When she looked inside, her eyes went wide. “Runes?”

“Runes.”

“I’m going to kiss you. What does it say?”

“It says to kiss the finder of this bone.”

“No, really. What does it say?”

“I’ll need time to do a transliteration—that is, to find the correct equivalent in our alphabet for each rune. But the rune set apart here could stand for the number four. Which suggests there should be an additional eight bones around here.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

“I think the killer is numbering the lines of his poem. One through nine for Desser. Ten through twenty-seven for Talfour.”

“So you do think it’s a poem?”