Inheritance: A Novel Part 27

Anderson nodded. "I'd like to confirm his print just the same."

"Okay."

"I saw you talking with Bexar County Homicide. What are they doing here?"

Levy walked on his tiptoes through the crime scene. He made it to the door held open by Julia Culpepper's left leg and turned back to Anderson.

"You know Dylan Hodges and Wayne Taliaferro?"

"I know Dylan."

"Apparently, Dylan Hodges was dating this girl here." He pointed at Julia with his toe.

"Oh man, that sucks."

"Yeah."

Anderson knelt down in front of David Everett and looked into the man's eyes. He was staring off into the nothingness beyond Anderson's right shoulder.

"What are you thinking?" Levy asked him.

"I'm thinking how badly we misjudged this one. Looking at him in the witness room, I never would have thought he could do this."

"None of us did, Keith."

"Yeah, but it still doesn't make it any easier, you know?"

Levy said, "Yeah, I know."

Anderson rubbed his chin, deep in thought.

After a long silence, he said, "You played us, didn't you? That whole time you were sitting in the interview room, pretending to be all s.p.a.ced out, you were playing us. You were a part of this the whole time."

Down in the autopsy room, there were three bodies on the waiting tables. The doors to the coolers were standing open. They were propped open with towels, just like every other door between here and the front lobby. Anderson stood in the middle of the autopsy room and looked around. From where he stood, he could see into the coolers. There were a few bodies in there as well.

"My guess is these bodies that are still here didn't come from the Morgan Rollins crime scene," he said to Levy.

"Do you recognize any of these guys from there?"

"No," Anderson said. "We'll have to check it for sure, but I'm willing to bet that whoever took the bodies from here knew who they were looking for. I don't think we'll find any of our Morgan Rollins victims here."

"Why would they take the bodies?" Levy said, and shuddered. "That doesn't make any sense."

"Maybe not to us."

"But you think it makes sense to somebody?"

"It must. Why else would they do it?"

Anderson walked over to the coolers. The fluorescents in this place were cheap, or maybe just old, and they cast a sickly bluish light on the tiled floor. But even in the bad light, Anderson could see there was something there.

He knelt down next to the cooler door and stared at the floor.

"What is it?" Levy asked.

"Can you get one of the evidence technicians down here?" he said. "It's more of that black soot we found on Everett's hands."

Anderson watched an evidence technician dab the tiled floor with a cotton swab. He held the swab up so that Anderson could see and said, "You think that's enough?"

"Yeah, I think so," Anderson said.

"Okay."

The technician, a young man with GUERRA written in bold white letters above the pocket of his utility uniform, dropped the swab into a clear plastic envelope, peeled off the self-adhesive strip, folded the flap over to seal it, then wrote his initials across the seal with a magic marker.

"Is there any more of it?" Guerra asked.

"No, I don't think so."

Guerra walked towards the door that led to the upstairs, and Anderson watched him go, his mind starting to drift. He was thinking about his oldest son, Keith Jr., and the weekend he'd spent a few years ago helping the boy move into his first college dorm room. Keith Jr.'s room had been on the third floor of a shabby 1950s era building, and the weekend he'd moved in, the elevators had been out. They'd moved a pickup truck full of stuff up three flights of steps, back and forth, all day long, and by the time they were done, they'd worn a black trail into the carpet with all the dirt they'd dragged in.

"Stop!" he yelled. "Hey, hold it a second."

Levy gave him a look. "What is it, Keith?"

"Hold on a second, Chuck." Anderson went to the doorway. To Guerra, he said, "Come back here a second, will you?"

"Sure," Guerra answered. "What is it?"

"Let me see one of your swabs, will you?"

He handed Anderson an extra swab from his kit and Anderson knelt down and rubbed it on the floor. It came away with the same black soot as the first swab.

"d.a.m.n it," he said. "Let me see your flashlight."

Guerra took a Mini Stinger from his belt and handed it to Anderson. Anderson knelt down again and shined the light at an oblique angle to the floor. In the beam, he could see more of the soot. He moved to the doorway and did the same thing down the hallway.

"What is it?" Levy asked.

"d.a.m.n it," Anderson said. He hung his head and muttered, "d.a.m.n it." Then he stood up and handed the flashlight back to the evidence technician. "Any idea how many people have been through here since this incident started?" he asked.

Guerra said, "I don't know. Probably about fifteen."

"d.a.m.n it," he muttered.

"You mind telling me what the problem is?" Levy asked.

"That soot is everywhere down here. There's a trail of it that leads from here all the way down the hallway. Probably goes up the stairs and out the front door, too. But we've walked all over it now." He laughed at himself. "d.a.m.n it," he said. "Sometimes I feel like such a f.u.c.king amateur."

Anderson and Levy walked back up to the lobby. The bodies had been moved, all but Everett's, and now there was nothing in the lobby but broken gla.s.s and a spent sh.e.l.l casing and a bunch of numbered metal tents to mark the various locations of pieces of evidence.

Levy said, "Well, what do you think? Allen's gonna want your first impressions."

"First impressions, huh?" Anderson thought, My first impression is that I don't have the slightest f.u.c.king clue what's going on. But what he said was, "I think it's pretty obvious we're dealing with a group of people here. How many I don't know, but those bodies had to go someplace, and that means somebody had to load them into some kind of vehicle. My guess is they had some kind of van parked out here in the parking lot. They used those towels we saw to hold open the doors, and they came and went through here like you would if you were moving furniture. That's why that black soot was spread out like it was. They must have traipsed it in with them as they were moving the bodies out of here."

"Okay," Levy said, "I can see that. But what about Everett there? How does he play into this?"

"Beats me," Anderson said. "It looks like he shot himself, but why he did it, and when he did it, is anybody's guess at this point."

Anderson scanned the crowd in the parking lot and his gaze found Allen. He was with two other members of the SAPD Command Staff and they were talking to a fourth man Anderson didn't recognize. Actually, they weren't really talking. Allen was doing the talking, nearly yelling, in fact, and the fourth man was standing there with his head hung low like he was a kid about to be sent to his room.

"What do you mean, when he did it? We have it on the video monitor. Well the sound of it anyway."

Everett had been standing in a spot the video cameras didn't cover, though they had picked up the gun's report.

Anderson turned back to Levy. "I was just wondering if he helped the others move the bodies. I don't see any of that black soot on his hands."

"You think it's possible he didn't shoot himself?"

"At this point I just don't know, Chuck. Hey, who's that with Allen over there?"

"No clue. He doesn't look happy, though."

"No, he doesn't."

Anderson took a deep breath. He was thinking about Jenny Cantrell again and what this was going to be like for her. Poor woman; it just kept piling up.

"Hey Keith?" Levy was at Anderson's side now, talking low, almost in a whisper. "Tell me something. We got goats with their hearts cut out. We got a detective with a goat's heart stuck in his chest cavity and his own heart G.o.d knows where. Now we've got missing bodies. Tell me, do you think we're dealing with some kind of cult?"

Anderson thought about that. It did make more sense than any other idea they had come up with so far. A lot of the sickness of all this was easier to digest when you started talking about cults. Cults were strange. They got people to do things they would never do on their own. Look at the Heaven's Gate people killing themselves so they could join up with the UFO mother ship. Look at Charles Manson talking his "family" into committing ma.s.s-murder. Look at Jim Jones talking nine hundred and something people into committing ma.s.s-suicide. You saw that kind of craziness, and the things they were dealing with suddenly seemed a little less crazy.

"Certainly seems like a cult thing, doesn't it?" Anderson said. "We ought to get somebody from the office to contact the FBI and see if they can crosscheck their files for similar crimes. If it's a cult, there's bound to be some kind of precedent."

Allen joined them then. He was wearing a crisp gray suit, white shirt, and blue and gold tie. His expression was smooth and reserved, but there was anger in his eyes.

"You guys find anything," he said.

"More of that black soot," Anderson said. "Whoever took the bodies must have had it on them."

Allen looked at the body of David Everett in the corner and shook his head. "This is unbelievable," he said. "Un-f.u.c.king-believable."

"Yes, sir," Anderson said.

"Do you know who that guy is over there? The one in the blue suit?"

He was pointing at the man Anderson had seen him talking to. Anderson told him that he didn't recognize him.

"That's Edgar Gantz. He's the Chief of the campus police. You know what he just told me?"

"What?"

"You're gonna love this. I figured whoever took those bodies had to have brought a van or something in here to do it. Am I right? You don't move forty-something bodies in a f.u.c.king Hyundai, right? So I ask him if he can have somebody go through the records. You know, try to get a list of all the vans that came and went through here tonight."

"And?" Anderson asked. He was almost afraid to hear the answer.

"He tells me they were short-handed last night. They only had three guards working, and he was at the main gate. You know how many other gates there are to this place?"

Anderson shook his head.

"Eight. They had one patrol car working last night. You know what that means?"

Levy said, "Sounds like n.o.body saw a d.a.m.n thing."

"Bingo," Allen said.

Anderson said, "I'm almost afraid to ask about the video cameras."

Allen pointed at the three buildings behind him. From where they stood they could see the backs of each. There were generators and Dumpsters and loading docks and a paved runway leading straight on through between them.

"There are no cameras back here," Allen said. "Can you believe that? This is supposed to be a secure facility. G.o.d, we're gonna look like fools when this gets out."

Allen scanned the scene again, then turned back to Anderson. "You said you found some more of that black soot. What's that all about?"

Anderson glanced at Levy, and he would have laughed if it hadn't been happening to him.

As they were heading back to the car, Anderson's cell phone rang.

"Hold on a sec," he said to Levy. "This is Margie."

He answered. "Hey babe, what's up?"

"What's up? Jesus. How about you f.u.c.king tell me, Keith. Jesus Christ, why in the h.e.l.l didn't you say anything to me about this when you left this morning? You knew, didn't you? Didn't you?"

"Margie, wait. Hold on, would you? What are you talking about?"

"You know d.a.m.n well what I'm talking about. Jesus, Keith. I get over here to Jenny's house this morning and I find her crying her eyes out. She tells me Ram's body's missing from the morgue. Is that true, Keith? Tell me that's not true. Somebody's playing a really s.h.i.tty joke on her. Tell me that."

Anderson stopped. He didn't answer for a long time. Levy was already at the car, but when he saw Anderson wasn't with him, he stopped and looked back.

"What is it?" he asked.