Diana Tregarde - Burning Water Part 24

Helmut Fieber, journalist for Der Tag, was also very happy.

At first, after the strange madwoman had routed him with her maniacal speech and her supposed "fecal samples," he'd simply been relieved to escape from a potentially unpleasant situation. But after reflection, he had begun to wonder if he hadn't as the Americans put it "been had."

For he had seen this woman at or near the site of every murder since then and yes, she had been working side by side with the coroner's Forensics team But she had never once departed with them. Rather, she left and presumably arrived with a young man. A young man who was never in uniform, but who Helmut had discovered was one "Mark Valdez." Detective Mark Valdez, to be precise.

And Helmut had more than once seen this woman in consultation with the Chief of Detectives, Samuel Grimes. He had watched as the unapproachable, surly Grimes listened to her every word, and seemed to accord those words some weight and importance.

In short, this was no coroner's a.s.sistant.

So he had attached himself to her at the Five Banners park, and spent the entire day following her.That had not been an easy task and it had been made more difficult by the fact that this woman (surely, surely she must be at least a little mad) had either walked or taken public transportation. He had nearly lost her any number of times today; he was hot and very tired, and did not in the least understand why she was not in possession of a car like every other American. The buses were all hot, crowded, and smelled of things best not thought of. And those who used the buses were not the sort that Fieber would have a.s.sociated with by choice.

He was uncomfortably aware that his blond hair and light skin were (and had been all day) attracting surrept.i.tious attention from a great many people; on this bus, on other buses, on the street.

This obsession with public transportation of the madwoman it seemed very dangerous to him.

Only now do I begin to understand that man in New York, who shot those boys on the subway, he thought, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. I felt safer in Nicaragua.

He could not understand why she was ignored, either; she surely looked as out of place as he did.

Perhaps, in her worn jeans and jacket, she did not look prosperous enough.

He began to regret his clothing choice of the morning. He did look prosperous. At least more than most of the rest of the bus riders.

Perhaps she will get off, soon, he thought hopefully, seeing her rousing from the inward-turned concentration she had been showing and display some signs of taking note of her surroundings. If I can get her alone more important, if I can find out where it is that she lives all of this will have been worthwhile.

To his immense relief, at that moment she pulled the wire to signal the bus driver to stop, and rose gracefully to her feet, using the momentum of the bus to propel her down the aisle to the front door.

He lurched to his feet and took the rear exit, hopping quickly down to the pavement and trusting the darkness of near-midnight to conceal the fact that he was behind her.

But she did not look to see if she was followed, merely strode off at her normal (albeit unnervingly) brisk pace.

Fieber was right behind.

Juanita Valdez had known all her life that she was "sensitive"; the Gift (as her grandmother had called it) ran in her blood. That Gift had saved the family time and time again from fire, flood, Indian raid It didn't save us from the greed of politicians but then, I'm not certain that anything would have Tonight her Gift was warning her of danger. Her nerves were as tight as guitar strings, and had been so ever since sundown. She circled the house repeatedly, checking locks, checking windows, peering out into the darkness and watching for the shadow that should not be there, the movement where nothing should move And all for nothing. The locks were sound, the windows secure, and all outside the house was serene.

You old fool, she scolded herself. n.o.body is going to get in except your girls. n.o.body is going to get in without a key! And the girls are all safely in their beds. Except young Di, of course, and she should be able to take care of herself.

Those thoughts did not comfort; instead the feeling of danger grew with every pa.s.sing minute. It got so bad that she turned out all the lights, the better to see what was going on outside and to avoid betraying her movements to anyone who might be lurking out there.

Finally she felt her way to the kitchen and armed herself with the biggest cleaver she owned. That gesture, as futile as it might be, at least made her feel a little better.

Certain that she was being terribly foolish, and yet unable to help herself, she set herself up as guard on the front door.

Great-grandmama must be grinning like a fox at me from her seat in Paradise, she told herself. I am surely playing the senile old idiot. What's going to come at me anyway bandidos? Pancho Villa?

Renegades?

Then she heard the rattle of a key in the lock, and froze.* * *

Di wrenched the door open and closed it quickly behind her, double-locking it and throwing the security bolt. She was panting like a greyhound at the end of the race, and with good reason she'd run the last six blocks to the boarding house.

From the moment she'd stepped off the bus she'd known she was in danger. At first she had simply acted normally except for putting up full and battle -hardened shields. But nothing attacked

Only the feeling of peril had grown, nearer and stronger with every minute, until she had found herself running as fast as she could for the relative safety of the boarding house and her tools. She'd hit the door and unlocked it so fast she hardly believed it, and had squirted inside as if she'd been oiled.

She heard a movement behind her and started to spin then her empathic senses identified Aunt Nita, and she relaxed just a trifle; completing her turn, but without the urgency of self-defense.

Her eyes had already adjusted to the limited light in the hall. It did not surprise her to see that Aunt Nita had armed herself with a cleaver.

She cleared her throat. "So you feel it too " she said; more of a statement than a question.

Aunt Nita nodded, slowly, the light from the streetlight outside glinting off the shiny blade of the cleaver. "Since sundown, and getting worse," she replied.

Di took a deep breath, willing her pulse to slow now that she was no longer running. "How about,"

she whispered, "if we make the rounds of the perimeter?"

Aunt Nita just nodded.

Although the feeling of danger had not faded, just having Diana with her made Juanita feel immeasurably better. Somehow anything I've missed she'll find. I'm not sure how, but She followed in Diana's wake; the girl went first to the kitchen, to her faint surprise. She took a tumbler from the cabinet, filled it with water, then dumped the entire contents of the saltshaker on the kitchen table into it.

If I didn't know that she knows what she's doing Then Juanita almost voiced an objection, as the girl muttered something over the tumbler and traced little signs over it with fingers that moved more swiftly than the cloud-shadows racing across the moon outside. Then she remembered that the girl had promised not to compromise Juanita's beliefs and that Di had weaponry that was had to be something other than purely physical. She bit the half-hearted protest back, and simply watched.

Starting with the kitchen, Diana began a circuit of the entire house, tracing little diagrams on each window and door with the salt-water mixture. She moved as surely as any cat in the darkness; moved as surely as if she had Juanita's own lifelong familiarity with the house and its contents.

Somehow Juanita was not terribly surprised to see those little diagrams glowing blue; nor that they continued to glow, very faintly, for a few seconds after they both pa.s.sed.

When the circuit of the house was completed, Diana led the way, still in silence, to the darkened living room. There they sat, as quietly as it is possible for two living women to sit; Juanita clutching her cleaver so tightly her fingers hurt, Diana still holding that tumbler of salt.w.a.ter as if it was both talisman and weapon.

It might well be both Juanita thought Then the night was splintered by the shattering of gla.s.s.

"The back " Diana cried, grabbing a poker from the fireplace beside her and racing for the kitchen.

Juanita ran right along with her until they both suddenly had an attack of good sense at the kitchen door and halted right there, listening for further sounds.

No sounds at all And it's gone, Juanita realized suddenly. The feeling of danger it's gone.

She steeled herself, transferred the cleaver to her left hand, and flung open the kitchen door with her right, flicking on the kitchen light as she did so.

There was a large blond man lying on his side across her kitchen table, sprawling half in, half out of the now-shattered west window.

He was staring at them both, from eyes that were nearly popping out of his head. He wasn't moving.

That was largely because he was very dead.

Juanita had not known until this moment that she was a brave woman. She put down the cleaver noting, with a detached portion of her mind that her hand was not shaking at all and followed Diana across an expanse of brown linoleum that now seemed as wide as the state of Texas itself.

The man was dripping blood all over her spotless kitchen table and floor, and another part of Juanita was outraged at the mess she was going to have to clean up. Now that they were closer, she could see that there was a gaping hole in his chest. Presumably his heart had been cut out It was a rational presumption, because she could easily see that a meaty lump of something vaguely heartlike and heart-shaped had been stuffed halfway into the man's mouth.

She jumped and nearly screamed as Diana cleared her throat.

"I think " Diana said slowly " that somebody is doing their best to scare me off this case." Her face hardened. "And it isn't going to work."

TWELVE.

They had been expecting and dreading another ma.s.sacre of some kind. It was practically inevitable, given the pattern that they had established.

But there was no way that they could have antic.i.p.ated the scene they were called to in the early dawn hours at Possum Kingdom Park.

"Mark," Di choked, after one look, "I can't take any more of this."

Her face was so pale it was nearly transparent, and her eyes seemed to fill the upper half of it. Mark had a feeling that he was as green as she was pale. All of the horrors that had led up to this climax of the three-day cycle were totally eclipsed by the sheer slaughter that had been found this morning by the park-department employees whose duty it was to check the park over when they arrived for the day's work.

From the signs it appeared as though the park had been in use for some time as a transfer point for illegal aliens. There were half-a-dozen trucks parked in an orderly row, all cleverly set behind a screening of evergreens running as a windbreak on an island in the middle of the parking lot evergreens that would just happen to hide them from patrols. Their painstaking arrangement argued for practice and much thought. All of the trucks were a mottled, dark green, further blending with the foliage, and all sported license plates from differing states. All of them were registered to families of migrant agricultural workers.

This didn't have the look of a "professional" people-smuggling job; it had more of the air of something that legal immigrants had concocted to get friends and family across the border.

It appeared that the illegals were taken across the border by some other means, then brought to the park and dropped off there, to be met by prearrangement. Probably each family (represented by a truck) took on three or four "new members," then headed on to another job. From there the new workers could slip into the migrant population almost invisibly.

It was a slick system; one that had probably been functioning for months, if not years, without detection.

Only last night, the system had been used for someone else's purposes, and the migrants had walked into a trap. A death-trap.

There were nearly fifty bodies in the picnic area near the parking lot. Men, women and children.

Nearly half of the bodies were of children under twelve.

And there were parts missing. Hearts and other things.

Di hadn't been able to bear more than a single glance. She took one look and buried her face in Mark's shoulder. He held her awkwardly, unable to give her any comfort at all. He attempted to deal with the scene, but he wasn't handling it much better than she was.For that matter, neither was most of the rest of the Homicide team. They were somewhat used to death but this went beyond their experience and worst nightmares.

The Forensics crew was coping, managing to do their job despite the horror that could be seen behind their deadpan expressions, but only with the help of the same emergency crew that had helped sort out the bodies after the last big air disaster at DFW. That lot was familiar with horror, and their steadiness helped to keep the Forensics folk from losing their own grip.

After several abortive attempts to face the carnage, all of which ended in her tears and failure, Mark sent Di back to the car; but he felt honor-bound to stay. She wasn't coherent enough for him to make out whether it was just the physical butchery that was getting to her, or something more. She looked on the verge of a breakdown and he wouldn't let her risk one; he needed her too much.

But he also knew he must look like h.e.l.l, because one of the parameds came over and patted his shoulder with clumsy encouragement.

"Hang in there, buddy," the stranger said, his own face stiff and his eyes dull, his- blond hair lank with nervous sweat. "You get numb after about a half an hour, honest."

Something inside Mark winced at the idea. He didn't want to go numb And yet, at the same time, he did. It would almost be worth losing one's humanity to also lose the frustrated agony, the knife-edged guilt, the sheer revulsion caused by seeing human beings, children, reduced to so much butchered meat "How many?" he asked, his jaw clenched so hard it ached.

"Thirty-eight. And no sign that any of them fought, either. It's d.a.m.ned spooky, is all I can tell you.

It's like they just laid themselves down for the knife like another Jim Jones thing, you know?"

When Mark forced himself to go nearer to examine the bodies heaped in the center of the clearing behind the shelter, he discovered that the paramed was right. Even though every face he saw was a mask of terror, even though the expressions were distorted with a pain and fear he could only imagine, there were no signs of combat or attempts at flight on the part of any of the victims.

And that was more than just "spooky." That was unnatural, and it raised the hair on the back of his neck in a way that almost made him forget the blood and the mutilated bodies.

Now he was drawn to the actual sacrificial site by an urgency he could not deny. Behind the cement and wood shelter was a picnic table, the makeshift altarplace. There was thick, dry gra.s.s all about it, gra.s.s that was showing distinct signs of life after the rain of the night before. He knelt beside Jean in the gra.s.s and studied the site, studied the way the gra.s.s was trampled flat in places, studied the obvious trail Unable to believe what he thought he was seeing, he walked around to the opposite side of the site.

It looked exactly the same at least to his eyes from there. He returned to Jean's side.

"No," he said flatly to her. "There is no way "

"Tell me what you see," she replied. "I'm trying to decide if I've gone around the bend."

"It no, it's too d.a.m.ned weird."

"Cough it out, dammit!" she snapped, a wild look of being near the edge herself stirring in the depths of her hazel eyes.

"It looks it looks like they all lined up here " He pointed to a nearly straight line of flattened gra.s.s at the edge of the parking lot. " like they lined up like kids after recess. And then then they came forward, one at a time " He indicated the path that was clearly worn into the gra.s.s from the beginning of the flattened line, past the shelter, to end at the picnic table that had been used as the sacrificial altar.

" of their own free will and I can't believe it! Even if whoever it was had these people under guard, and the guards were armed with machine guns, some of them should have tried to break and run!

But "

"There's not a sign of it," Jean agreed, nodding, not losing a particle of that strange, fey expression as she turned to study the site once again. "I don't believe it either but there isn't one single indication that anything else happened. They could have been zombies or robots except that those faces "

She shuddered, and Mark shuddered in sympathy.

"They knew what was going to happen to them, and they marched up to their deaths anyway," she said. "Mark, it doesn't make any sense! Not even drugs or hypnosis could make people do that! It's like they were all under some kind of horrible, evil spell."* * *

"It was a 'spell.' Of control," Di said flatly. "They were controlled, from first to last. Like robots only these robots knew what was going to happen to them."

She had managed to come out of the car and face the site once the bodies were all carted off to the morgue. By then nearly everyone had gone except Mark and Ramirez.

She pa.s.sed a trembling hand through her hair, and bit her lip. "That's not all, Mark. This time the cult leaders haven't bothered to wipe out the traces of what they did. It's like they've gotten powerful enough to be contemptuous of me...."

"Maybe," he replied. "Maybe not. They could be counting on the idea that they've scared you off.

Hm?"

"I don't know!" She looked at him with haunted eyes. "That's the problem I don't know!"