The Mad and the MacAbre (18 page)

“
No way to know for sure,”
Cavenaugh said, “but I think so. Unless there are more bodies
hidden in these mountains. Without DNA analysis, we can only work
under the assumption that they are.” He sighed and turned to
Gabriel. “What kind of animal did you say it was?”

“
I didn’t get a very good
look at it.”

“
Do you think it’s possible
it might have been a cat?”

“
A cat? But we’re in the
middle of nowhere and…” His words trailed off as realization
dawned.

Cavenaugh produced two clear plastic bags,
the first of which contained an assortment of whole finger and
toenails. He set it aside and held up the second for Gabriel to
examine. It was filled with a mess of hairs: some of them were long
and stiff, others shorter and slightly curved. There were even
pinches that appeared to have been shed in clumps. Some were white,
but most were a subdued orange.

“
Oscar,” Gabriel whispered.
“How could he have survived out here all this time?”

“
You’re missing the big
picture,” Cavenaugh said. He dropped the baggie on the floor beside
the bones. “This cat knows where at least one of the bodies is
hidden.”

***

They had all followed the tracks through the
snow and into the woods until the prints had vanished in the
detritus beneath the heavy pine canopy where the snow couldn’t
reach, at which point they had split into three pairs and headed in
different directions. That had been close to an hour ago now, which
was the designated time to turn around and head back to the cabin
where they would all meet for an early breakfast. While Maura and
Will had branched left and struck off to the north, and Cavenaugh
and Kelsey had continued east in the direction the tracks had been
leading them, Gabriel and Jess had veered south. They all
understood that the tabby knew this forest better than all of them
by now, and if it didn’t want to be found, then they didn’t have a
prayer of finding it. But they had to take the chance. If Gabriel
had startled Oscar badly enough, Lord only knew when he might
return to his home.

Gabriel had given up calling for the cat.
Oscar certainly wasn’t going to scamper out of his hiding place at
the sound of Gabriel’s voice, but it had at least made him feel
like he was doing something productive. Now he and Jess walked in
silence, with only the crackling sound of dead pine needles, broken
branches, and festering aspen leaves between them. They swung their
flashlight beams ahead of them, making the tree trunks cast shadows
that simulated movement, as though dark figures ducked behind them
as soon as the light neared.

Jess wore the same look on her face that
Gabriel had seen earlier in the night. They weren’t close enough
for him to try to coax out whatever was bothering her, so he waited
for her to voice her concerns.

“
It’s time to head back,”
she finally said. A cloud of her breath hung around her head. Her
cheeks and nose were bright red, and she had begun to sniff every
few seconds. She looked him in the eyes, then turned quickly away.
“We aren’t going to find him regardless. Not like this
anyway.”

Gabriel pulled a bottle of water out of his
jacket, took a long drink, and offered it to Jess. She took it with
a grateful nod, and tipped it back.

“
I’ve been thinking about
this,” Gabriel said. “I’m pretty sure the remains have to be fairly
close for the cat to have been able to find them. If Oscar’s still
living at the cabin after all this time, then he can’t possibly be
roaming too far.”

“
That’s why we need to find
him.” She passed back the water and he tucked it into his coat.
“Maybe he can lead us to them.”

“
I don’t think so. By now,
the flesh would have rotted and sloughed from the bones. There
would be nothing left for him to eat, or at least nothing he would
want to eat. I’m confident he gathered those…parts not long after
they died, and has been living off of birds and ground squirrels
since.”

Jess nodded. It obviously wasn’t what she
had been hoping to hear.

They started walking back to the north.
Several minutes passed before she blurted out what was really
bothering her.

“
I think we should call the
police. Maybe finding these new bones would light a fire under
their butts and get them back up here. We could always use the
help.” She paused. “And the bottom line is now that bones are
beginning to turn up, they should stop looking at this as a missing
persons case, and start investigating it as murder.”

“
They came out here after
discovering Nathan’s femur, and that accomplished
nothing.”

“
But we know more now than
they did then. They could bring dogs up here to track the cat, and
maybe figure out where it came across the remains.”

Gabriel shook his head. By all rights, new
evidence should be turned over to the police, but Cavenaugh was a
cop, and seemed to think that calling in the authorities now would
be a waste of time. At least at this juncture. He had suggested
they use the next several days to search on their own before
reporting the evidence. Besides, the police and FBI had both
scoured the countryside over the prior two days and had found
nothing. The appearance of a pile of phalanges wasn’t
earth-shattering news either, at least from their perspective, and
any subsequent search would be halfhearted, undermanned, and sloppy
at best. It would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. If they expected
to find nothing, then that was exactly what they would find.

Gabriel agreed with Cavenaugh’s assessment
and the plan to buy themselves just a little more time, but he
didn’t particularly care for the idea of withholding their findings
any longer than that.

“
You agree we should wait,”
Jess said, making no attempt to hide her disdain.

“
For a couple of days.
That’s all.”

“
Doesn’t it make you wonder
why Cavenaugh—Detective Cavenaugh—would not want to call it
in?”

“
I…don’t know,” Gabriel
said, but he clearly understood what she implied, which brought him
right back to his suspicion that Cavenaugh was indeed hiding
something.

“
Look at it this way.” She
took him by the arm to stop him and met his eyes when he looked at
her. “The bones were scarred with teeth marks, but none of them
were broken. That tells us the cat was unable to break through the
cortex to get to the marrow. What makes you think it would be able
to bite off an entire finger? Think about it.”

Gabriel pictured the phalanges that had
remained articulated. None of them had still been attached to the
metacarpals or metatarsals, nor had there been any residual
cartilage on the bases of the proximal phalanges. Cavenaugh must
have recognized it right away.

“
Christ,” Gabriel
whispered. “They were severed before Oscar found them.”

***

Fueled by the lack of sleep, the manner in
which they had awakened, and the task at hand, the tension in the
main room of the front cabin was palpable. They had eaten their
soggy oatmeal in silence, and now the dirtied paper plates hung in
a plastic trash bag by a nail from the back of the northern cabin
in hopes that the smell would entice Oscar to return. The coffee
wasn’t percolating nearly fast enough to keep up with the demand.
Will had joked that this was probably the only place in the world
where there wasn’t a Starbucks within a block, but none of them had
found it remotely amusing.

Cavenaugh, Kelsey, and Gabriel scrutinized
the satellite maps while the other three played the daily video
blogs on Cavenaugh’s laptop, making notes of anything the ghosts on
the screen said that sounded like directions. They only narrowed
the search to a ten mile radius for fear of being too aggressive.
The last thing they wanted was to miss the right hot spring based
on a faulty assumption. The springs were hard enough to spot on the
maps as it was. With the dense forest and ragged cliffs, they could
barely discern the river cutting right through the center, let
alone smaller ponds. They guessed the maps were made in roughly
March or April as there were still shaded slopes white with snow,
while others showcased evergreens and aspens already beginning to
sprout leaves. Details were relatively sketchy, but they had
managed to locate several small creeks and a dozen larger bodies of
water. They eliminated the lakes fed directly by the streams and
those where they could see the wooden arch of beaver dams. Those
were obviously freshwater, and they were looking for isolated pools
without current or significant runoff, which narrowed their
prospects to four. Two of them were within three miles of the
cabins, one just under five, and the last barely within their
radius. Considering they were only visible as faint reflections
through the overhanging treetops, there were no guarantees they
were actually bodies of water and not some stray piece of
corrugated aluminum from an elk hunter’s blind, but they needed to
explore every viable option.

All four possibilities were just below
timberline, nearly hidden by the final surge of pines. One was on
the southwestern slope of Mount Isolation, and there was another on
the northern side. The third was on the northern slope of Mount
Haverstam, roughly four miles south of Mount Isolation, across a
valley bisected by a small stream. The fourth and farthest, was
nearly ten miles to the northwest, on the northern slope of Mount
Cranston. It was the least likely candidate as the rocky face was
carved with eroded trenches above the pond, which potentially
suggested that it was fed by seasonal runoff from the melting snow,
but as they couldn’t entirely exclude it, they would save it for
last.

“
Listen to this,” Maura
said. She sat on the middle cushion of the couch with the laptop on
her thighs while Jess and Will leaned in to see the screen from
either side. “This is from the book of Isaiah, chapter fourteen,
verses twelve through fifteen: How art thou fallen from heaven, O
Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground,
which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart,
I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars
of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the
sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to
hell, to the sides of the pit.”

“
Three of the four are on
the northern slope of the mountains,” Kelsey said, “but I don’t
feel we can eliminate the fourth based on its proximity. It’s the
closest to the cabins, and looks like it’s one of the larger
springs. What else do you have?”

“
Here,” Jess said, pointing
down at the binder in which she was taking notes. She traced under
the words as she spoke. “This is Ephesians, chapter six, verses
eleven and twelve: Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be
able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places.”

“
All of them are roughly
the same elevation,” Kelsey said.

“
But of the three
mountains, Isolation is the tallest.”

“
This is getting us
nowhere,” Will said.

“
We need to remember that
we’re dealing with more information than they had when they
disappeared,” Gabriel said. “They didn’t have satellite images or
any knowledge of hot springs. They were following the clues from
the bible alone.”

“
You said something about
the bacteria turning red, right?” Jess asked.

“
Yeah, for UV
protection.”

“
I know it’s a stretch, but
fire could be used as a metaphor for the color red, like in this
quote from Ezekiel: Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and
I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou
hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of
fire.”

“
Do you really think it’s
possible they found what they were looking for based on these
verses?” Will asked. “I mean, what are the odds of all of this
stuff existing right here in Colorado? Didn’t all of this biblical
stuff happen somewhere in the Middle East?”

“
It’s like they say here,”
Jess said. “This is from Daniel: Thus he said, the fourth beast
shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from
all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it
down, and break it in pieces. Stephanie said in the video that they
interpreted this to say that the world is divided into four parts,
and that the fallen angels were banished to similar locations
within each. And that the fourth kingdom describes North America,
specifically the United States.”

“
Angels don’t chop
someone’s fingers and toes off,” Will said. “That’s the kind of
thing men do.”

“
You don’t believe in
angels?” Maura asked.

“
This isn’t the
time.”

“
Your brother believed in
them,” Jess whispered.

“
Grant was a dreamer. He
would have believed anything he was told. The more outrageous the
better. But he was my brother. My only little brother. And I’ll be
damned if I don’t return home with some kind of news for my
mother…and someone to be held responsible. So you ask if I believe
in angels? Not a chance in hell. And despite all of his faults, I
loved my brother, and I’m here to see that somebody pays for his
death.”