Brood XIX (8 page)

What were the facts? Whoever buried the
child's body had expected it to be found. Why else go to the
trouble of planting the clues that would lead to a false
identification? Whoever staged the scene had to have a fairly
comprehensive understanding of genetics, had to know that the
police would be satisfied with two separate means of identification
so they wouldn't need to test the skeletal remains separately. The
corpse needed to be displayed in such a manner that there would be
no doubt about the mechanism of death, the level of violence so
stunning and obvious that there would be no reason to suspect
anything else.

So what kind of suspect pool did that
create?

A cop would be an easy choice, but all of the
sheriff's deputies had been accounted for the night of Emma's
disappearance. It was possible that one of them might have been in
collusion with an unknown party, however unlikely. Trey had looked
each of them in the eye every day in the intervening years and just
couldn't imagine how they could have fooled him so completely. He
couldn't afford to rule out anyone at this stage, but he needed to
consider every potential angle. What about medical professionals? A
doctor would have the knowledge base to pull it off and free reign
over patient records. Montgomery would have been able to access the
correct file, and Emma would have known him well enough to walk
away with him without causing a scene. He could have just playfully
scooped her up and been on his way before anyone---

Then it hit him.

The dental records.

Trey had recognized that the teeth were part
of the setup. All of them had been badly broken, with the exception
of the five that were necessary to generate the positive
identification. They were chipped and fractured, just to nowhere
near the same degree. Anyone could have seen which teeth had been
filled. But only one person could have known which ones had
cavities that had yet to be filled.

Dr. Carlton Matthews.

What had he said?

He had been more than happy to take care
of the details on his end. After all, he and his wife had a
daughter Emma's age who they schooled at home
.

Trey jerked the wheel to the right and pinned
the gas. The clinic was only three blocks away, and, if he was
right, he didn't have the time to waste trying to rouse Montgomery
and force him to open the doors.

Buildings flew past. He blew through stop
signs without a sideways glance and locked up the brakes in front
of the clinic. The office was dark. He could see the reception
counter through the twin glass doors, a dozen empty seats, and
tables littered with magazines.

He leapt out and raced up to the doors. A tug
on the handles confirmed they were locked. If given the proper
tools and enough time, he probably could have picked the lock, but
he had neither. A quick survey of the seams around the doors
revealed no wires or magnetic strips. No alarm. He raised his right
foot and kicked the glass. Hard. Once. Twice. It shattered on the
third try and he barreled through, nearly slipping on the shards
covering the floor. The door beside the registration desk was
unlocked, and the computer behind the counter had only been put to
sleep. He jostled the mouse and brought the screen to life. There
were a dozen icons. He double-clicked the one labeled RECORDS. It
asked for a medical records number rather than a name. He closed it
and opened the SCHEDULING program. This one allowed him to enter
the last name Matthews. He tabbed to the FIRST NAME box, which gave
him three options in a drop-down menu: Carlton, Sandra, and
Chelsea. Sandra was the wife's name, so he populated the box with
Chelsea. The screen filled in with her biographical data: birth
date, social security number, address, phone number, insurance
code, and a nine digit MR number. He grabbed a pen, scribbled it on
his palm, and opened the RECORDS folder again. He typed the number
at the prompt and waited.

A string of minimized reports popped up on
the left side, labeled by date. The most recent was from twenty-six
months ago. He clicked it and saw his brother-in-law's name listed
as the treating physician. Several words jumped out at him from the
body of the report.

Distal femoral osteoblastic
activity
.

Metastasis
.

End-stage
.

Osteosarcoma
.

The body they had found belonged to Chelsea
Matthews. She'd been six years-old, the same as Emma. Warren had
been unable to save her. She had died of her cancer, leaving behind
grief-stricken parents unable to rationalize the loss of their only
child. Matthews had been Emma's dentist. She would have trusted him
well enough to wander off with him. She would have seen him as
safe, as a friend.

Did the Matthewses blame Warren for their
daughter's death?

He had been more than happy to take care
of the details on his end. After all, he and his wife had a
daughter Emma's age who they schooled at home
.

Was it possible they had somehow snapped and
figured that if they couldn't have their child, then neither could
the man who let theirs die?

If that was the case then...

Trey jumped up from the desk and sprinted out
of the office.

The Jeep's engine roared and its tires
screamed on the asphalt as he sped away from town toward the remote
area where the Matthewses lived.

* * *

Vanessa pried at the bars over the window,
but they didn't budge in the slightest. The windows on the main
floor were out of her reach. That meant she either had to use the
front or the back door, and surely both were locked. She hadn't
thought to bring her cell phone and she was unarmed. She didn't
even have a set of keys to hold between her knuckles, but now that
she had found Emma, she couldn't bear to leave her here a second
longer.

She had come for her daughter, and she wasn't
leaving without her.

Vanessa walked right around to the front
porch and ascended the short slate staircase. She stood an arm's
length from the door. The cicadas scurried away from the door.
Heart pounding, she raised her fist and knocked.

The sound echoed hollowly away from her.

She knocked again, harder this time, and
listened for approaching footsteps.

Nothing.

She pounded again and again.

The cicadas broke the silence. Their song was
deafening. It grew faster, more insistent, raising the hackles on
the backs of her arms.

She didn't hear the deadbolt disengage. The
door opened inward and a shadow stepped into view. She caught the
glint of moonlight from a long blade in time to throw herself
backward.

The knife sliced through the air in front of
her.

She hit the porch on her back and tumbled
down the stairs, twisting her arm underneath her and hitting her
head.

A black silhouette stood above her, knife at
its side. The face was a wash of shadows, framed by a riot of
tousled hair.

The cicada song died.

In the silence, she heard the man
breathing.

He stepped down onto the first step.

And then the next.

Vanessa screamed and tried to scrabble
away.

The insects took flight at once and the night
filled with the buzzing sound of wings.

One moment, the man stood three steps above
her, and the next he was swallowed by a dark cloud of cicadas. The
blade flashed through the swarm. She heard him scream as he swung
the knife. His exertions only served to topple him off-balance. He
missed the next stair down and fell toward her.

She rolled out of the way just in time.

There was a loud crack and the screaming
stopped.

The insects swarmed around her for several
moments before finally lifting, leaving behind a crumpled heap of
humanity. The man's legs trailed him up the staircase. His arms
were pinned under his body. The tip of the knife stood from the
center of his back in an expanding amoeba of blood. His head was
cocked to the side at a severe angle. Fluid trickled from the
corners of his mouth and his eyes stared blankly through her. She
recognized him immediately.

Carlton Matthews.

Her daughter's dentist.

She struggled to her feet, swayed until she
found her balance, and mounted the staircase.

The front door was wide open.

There was only darkness beyond.

Cradling her injured arm to her chest, she
crossed the threshold and stepped into the silent house.

The cicadas were already ahead of her,
clinging to the walls, the furniture, the ceiling...as though giving
life to the house itself.

* * *

The Cherokee slewed from side to side on the
gravel road, trailing an angry fist of dust. Trey watched the
mailboxes hurtle past until he saw the one he was looking for and
slammed the brakes. The car skidded sideways and he used the
momentum to turn a one-eighty without stopping. He hit the driveway
at thirty miles an hour, but didn't dare push it any faster. Miring
the vehicle in the swamp wouldn't help anyone. The road wound
fairly tightly, and he didn't want to prematurely betray his
approach either.

The trees fell away to either side as he
drove into the clearing. The first thing he noticed was the open
front door. The second was the body collapsed at the foot of the
stairs.

He drove right up onto the lawn and braked
hard. Turf flew from the rear tires. He was out of the car before
it hit the ground.

Trey ran around the hood and crouched beside
the body. He didn't need to check for a pulse to know that Matthews
was dead. The knife had been driven straight through his chest and
the vertebrae of his cervical spine formed lumpy, bruised knots
where they had broken and separated from the column.

Drawing his service pistol, a Beretta 92FS,
he crept up the stairs toward the front door. The only sound was
the soft scuff of his shoes. He sighted the darkness down the
barrel and cautiously entered the house.

* * *

Vanessa didn't waste any time searching the
main level. She needed to reach the basement. It pulled her onward
like an iron filing to a magnet.

The formal living and dining room off the
foyer to her right was empty; the hallway leading toward the
bedrooms to the left deserted. She found the staircase between a
comfortably furnished family room and a kitchen ripped straight
from the pages of
Better Homes & Gardens
. The carpeted
steps creaked subtly as she descended. The stairs doubled back upon
themselves when she reached the landing. Were it possible, it was
even darker down there still. She gripped the railing and pressed
on. The damp smell of mildew greeted her, and beneath it something
else.

Sweat.

Ammonia.

Fear.

She heard something shuffle ahead of her. A
swishing sound, like soft-soled shoes or slippers across carpet.
Then the quiet click of a closing door.

Tiny legs scurried across the back of her
hand. She brushed the wall when she jerked it away, grazing slick
insect exoskeletons.

At the bottom of the stairs, she stopped to
gather her bearings and allow her eyes adjust to the darkness. She
was standing in a small recreation room. The faint seepage of light
around the sealed window showed the vague outlines of furniture,
maybe a rocking horse and a toy box on the floor. A hallway led
away from her to either side, shadowed and indistinct.

Clicking sounds from her right. She turned
and ran her palm along the plaster, knocking off dozens of cicadas.
Their wings caught them before they hit the floor. They buzzed
around her head before alighting on the wall once more.

Vanessa held her arms out in front of her as
she walked. She listened for the shuffling sound to repeat, but
heard only the clicking all around her.

Her hands met with resistance and she managed
to stop herself before she collided with what felt like a door. She
traced the surface until she found a knob and turned it with both
hands. The door was heavy, crafted from solid, metal-reinforced
wood that dragged on the carpet. She had to lean her shoulder into
it to open it wide enough to squeeze through.

The room reeked of Lysol, which didn't quite
mask the lingering stench of body odor and waste matter. Wan
squares of light framed the aluminum sheets bolted over the
windows. She could barely discern the shape of the canopy over a
small bed, the top edges of a dresser and a rocking chair. A small
table in the center.

She heard shallow, whispered breathing. The
sound of a peacefully sleeping child.

Her heart fluttered and whatever control she
had maintained over her emotions fled her. She started to cry and
pawed at the wall in search of a light switch.

"Emma? Emma! Mommy's here!"

She flicked the switch and the overhead bulb
bloomed. The sudden influx of light was blinding, forcing her to
bat her eyelids. She saw snippets of the room, like a slideshow of
the same image flipping past too quickly. The walls and the ceiling
were covered with cicadas. A rocking chair in the right corner,
situated across the low table from its much smaller twin. Books on
the table: arithmetic and phonics. A television with a DVD player
on a stand, stacks of movies underneath. Piles of teddy bears and
dolls. A steel eyebolt was set into the middle of the floor. The
thick chain attached to it led up under the covers on a four-poster
bed with a lace canopy. A sleeping form under a mound of linens. A
spill of short blonde hair on the pillow.

Short...blonde...hair.

Vanessa's heart shattered. She grabbed at the
pain in her chest. The room started to spin. This wasn't her
daughter. Emma had always had the most beautiful ebon hair.

Vanessa fell to her knees and crawled toward
the bed.