A Conspiracy of Bones (Temperance Brennan #19)(54)
In minutes, the driveway ended in an odd hexagon hosting only some very optimistic grass and brush. Where the brush thinned, I could see gravel, here and there a straight ribbon of gray that was probably an old walkway or drive. Off to the left, the remains of a shed, one wall barely upright and leaning precariously, the other three collapsed into a jumble of rusted tin and weathered boards. At the far end of the hexagon, the strange-looking rise.
I paused, recalling Affordable Art and his Remington. The clearing offered zero cover. If someone was present and armed, I’d be an easy target.
I checked my watch. 1:45 p.m.
“Hello!”
Nothing.
“Is anyone there?”
More nothing.
I stepped from the trees. The sudden onslaught of sun caused me to squint.
The closer I got, the more detail I could make out. The mound was shaped like an enormous flat-topped Quonset hut. Though an overlay of soil softened its outer contour, an angular hardscape was evident beneath. My archaeologist’s eye said the thing was definitely not the work of Mother Nature. Additional clues were the steel girders surrounding its perimeter. And the camouflage netting stretched across them, the type used by the military in woodland settings.
I had no doubt the mound was man-made. Or the purpose of the camo. Someone wanted the structure and any vehicles parked beside it hidden from aerial view. The ploy had worked. On Google Earth, the setup had appeared as an unremarkable rise in elevation.
I was struck by the same somber thought I’d had at Ms. Ramos’s building. If this really was Vodyanov’s place of residence, he wouldn’t be here. He was lying on a gurney in the MCME morgue. Heavner’s morgue.
Blood pumping, I crossed the last few yards and stepped under the netting. The near-blackness forced my constricted pupils into a rapid about-face.
“Anyone home?”
No response.
I crept forward, using the flashlight app on my phone. Stopping every few yards to listen. To shout.
Slowly, my vision adjusted. I made out a wall some distance ahead. In the wall, a dark rectangular outline, maybe a door.
As I moved, objects leaped from the gloom in the glow from my screen. A backhoe, a front-loader, other machinery that might have been meant for farming or construction. A bent bicycle wheel. Stacked metal bins. Dumpsters. Each article threw an elongated shadow version of itself before dissolving back into darkness.
In less than a minute, I reached the wall. The rectangle was a blast door similar to the one in World’s End House.
I illuminated the concrete in small sections. Saw no handle or latch, no buzzer or bell, no camera. Knocking was futile. I knew from the Timmer video that the door was a freaking foot thick.
“Crap!” Swallowed by the suffocating heat and darkness trapped under the camo.
I felt stymied. What had I expected? A little glass box with a cake saying Eat Me spelled out with currants?
I spent a pointless moment chastising myself for “wild-goosing,” as Slidell would say. Myself took issue, arguing that the trip hadn’t been futile. The nature of the property was now clear.
Suddenly, I tensed.
Pressing the phone to my chest, I went totally still.
Ten seconds. Thirty? Had I imagined the sound?
Then I heard it again.
Dear God in heaven!
I wasn’t alone.
19
Someone was there!
Something?
Skritch. Skritch.
Reflexively, my free hand flew to my mouth.
The noise stopped abruptly.
The renewed silence was worse. Unseen eyes were watching. Ears listening.
I stood in the darkness, heart banging, mobile mashed to my shirt.
Run? Try resending the text? Maybe here I’d pick up a signal from inside the bunker?
Yes. Reverse order.
I tapped the screen. Felt crosshairs on my back. My illuminated face.
Still no go.
I was cursing again when a shadow detached from the closest dumpster, a cigar-shaped object clamped in its jaws.
An image sparked in my brain. Glistening teeth. A bloody goose head.
A nanosecond, then relief. No gun-wielding psycho had me in his sights. But what? The creature seemed too low to the ground to be a dog. Too large to be a rat. And the Macanudo?
I shone the phone toward the dumpster.
The raccoon froze. Banded eyes wide, it gave a juddery chirp, then scurry-dashed for the safety of the outside world.
The limbic buzz almost caused me to laugh. Almost.
In his panic to haul ass, Groucho had dropped his prize. It lay in the dirt, fuzzy and ill defined. Curious, I walked over for a closer look.
The coon hadn’t been enjoying a fine Cuban. Of course it hadn’t. It had been rummaging for food. I bent and lifted its discarded booty.
Two bone fragments lay in my palm, their combined length approximately six inches. Each had one end terminating in jagged spikes, the other in a clean-edged break.
Gripping the phone with my teeth, I raised the fragments into the light. Both showed areas of charring, suggesting burning. The splintered end of each was scored and punctured, suggesting scavenging. No way to know which had come first.
The borders of the clean-edged break were pale and unstained, suggesting that trauma was recent. I tried fitting the two pieces together. They aligned nicely. I was holding a mid-shaft section of long bone, its only surviving anatomical feature a sliver of articular surface rimming one AWOL joint. The sliver’s wavy texture told me the limb had still been growing when its owner had died.