The Soul Collectors (35 page)

‘I read the report. They found nothing. I’m sorry, Jack, but we don’t have any evidence. These people are too smart at covering their tracks.’ A long, tired sigh, and then Darby said, ‘I need a break, grab some coffee.’

‘I think we could all use one,’ Sergey said, standing. ‘Let’s meet back here in fifteen.’

They regrouped in the adjoining room, in the far corner near the corkboard holding the yellowing photographs for the missing children from 1945 to 1972.

Darby took the lead. ‘It’s minor damage.’

Sergey’s jaw dropped. ‘
Minor
damage? They just overheard that entire call. And that USB drive has been floating around from person to person. It’s been sitting on desks inside the lab where people have been talking about evidence. Jesus.’

Sergey pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Casey, arms across his chest, stared at the children smiling at him from the board.

‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s over,’ Darby said. ‘But it’s still a lucky break.’

Casey spoke. ‘Radio frequency.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘All we need to do is find out what radio frequency that listening device is set to and track it down. You have that kind of equipment on board?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Sergey said. ‘Let me talk to our tech guys.’

‘Wait, before you go, what were you about to say before I cut you off?’

‘I have a potential lead. Our forensic entomologist identified the bee you found and called a conservation biologist from the University of Connecticut, this guy named James Wright. He’s on the phone, holding.’

‘Any other place where we can talk to him?’

‘No, not at the moment. We have only one of those conference-phone units set up.’

‘Get the USB drive out of there,’ Darby said. ‘Pack it away someplace where it can’t do any more damage and then meet us back at the conference room.’

Darby took her original seat. Casey leaned against the wall with his arms folded across his chest and Sergey sat on the edge of the table next to the conference-room phone.

Sergey pressed a button. ‘Mr Wright?’

‘Still here,’ replied a nasal and reedy voice.

‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, sir. Thank you for holding.

‘Mr Wright, I have two people sitting with me right now: Jack Casey and the person who discovered the bee, Dr Darby McCormick. She’s also one of our special investigators. I’ve told them who you are and how you came to us, so in the interests of saving time go ahead and summarize what you told me about the bee.’

‘The bee,’ Wright said, ‘is a silver-haired species known as
Epeoloides pilosula
. They’re very rare in New England. In fact, we thought the species was extinct. The last time one was spotted was in Needham, Massachusetts, back in 1927. Then, a little over a year ago, I discovered one here in Connecticut, in the south-eastern part of the state – in a power line corridor, of all places. That’s what made my study so controversial. I won’t bore you with the details, as I know you’re pressed for time, but suffice to say people think these power line corridors – or transmission corridors, as they’re more commonly referred to – are disruptive to the environment. When you carve out a section of forest, you don’t expect to discover, decades later, a rare species of bee that was generally considered extinct to be thriving underneath power lines, of all places.

‘But that’s exactly what happened – and is still happening. Because of the excavation, and the considerable care taken to prune trees to a height that won’t disrupt the power lines, we are, in essence, re-creating what I guess you could call a meadow in which dwindling insects like bees can thrive as well as other animals and plants. Needless to say, most of the conservation groups are up in arms about this.’

Darby said, ‘What about Massachusetts? Have there been any confirmed sightings?’

‘It’s possible these silver-hairs are thriving somewhere in Massachusetts, but, if they are, no one has reported it. I spoke with several of my New England colleagues – we’re a small group – and not one of them has any documented sightings of
Epeoloides pilosula.
As far as I know, the transmission corridor here in Connecticut is the only area where these silver-hair bees have been discovered.’

‘Do they or can they live in someplace like a basement or cellar?’

‘I’m not sure I understand your question.’

‘Would these bees seek shelter in someplace like a house? We’re already well into autumn, and my understanding is bees can’t thrive in cool weather.’

‘Ah, now I see where you’re heading. As I’m sure you’re all well aware, we’ve been experiencing several climate changes in the last decade. Warmer winters and sometimes we don’t even
have
a spring, we head right into the start of summer. And several times since the start of October, we’ve hit temperatures in the high seventies, so it’s not uncommon to see bees and other insects during these periods.

‘Now, to answer the question about their seeking shelter inside a house, the answer is no, absolutely not,’ Wright said. ‘This species feeds on yellow loosestrife. It’s not a houseplant but rather one that lives outside and grows in shady banks or wetlands. That’s where I discovered my
Epeoloides pilosula
, feeding on the yellow loosestrife. And I should note that the bee you found was, in fact, dead.’

In her mind’s eye Darby pictured Mark Rizzo being dragged across the woods, across dried pine needles, leaves and now this bee making its way into his mouth.

‘This transmission corridor,’ she said. ‘Where is it?’

‘Off Route 163 in south-eastern Connecticut,’ Wright said. ‘You can access it easily from the highway, and you can drive down the path since it’s … I’d say, oh, roughly three hundred feet or so wide.’

Darby had no intention of driving down it. ‘How isolated is this area?’

‘I’d say very.’

‘Any old homes or buildings in the area? Cemeteries?’

‘Nothing but miles and miles of woods.’

‘Any of it excavated?’

‘Not to my knowledge, but then again I can’t say I’ve explored the entire area.’

She turned back to Sergey. He didn’t have any questions and looked at Casey, who shook his head.

Sergey said, ‘Mr Wright, I’d like to ask you to stick close to your phone in case we have any additional questions.’

‘Of course, of course. You have all my numbers?’

‘I do. Again, thank you for your help.’

Sergey hung up and said to Darby: ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘Hear what?’

‘This plan you’ve got cooking.’

71

‘First,’ Darby said, ‘tell me how many people you have on this plane.’

Sergey checked his watch and then leaned back, hands stuffed in his pockets. He shut his eyes and bit his bottom lip, hissing in air.

‘Could be … maybe twenty-five or so.’

‘That number include Secret Service?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t include support staff either, like the pilot.’

‘I’m going to need to examine each person on this plane to see if they have this tattooed symbol. And we should check the bodies in Florida, the Secret Service agents –’

‘Okay.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Okay, Jesus, I’ll set everything up. We’ll do it here in the conference room.’

‘You should call the pilot too. Tell him to warm up the engines.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Connecticut,’ she said. ‘We need to search the woods.’

‘You think these people are hiding out in the woods.’

‘This group has been moving around the country for several decades. The bulletin board shows that they’re somewhere here in New England.’

‘No, we
believe
they could be somewhere in New England. The New England kids who disappeared, they’re the youngest family member, which adds them to our working list.’

‘Fine. What we
do
know is that they have to be holed up someplace close by. They came to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and after they blew up the house they waited around the area to follow me. They killed John Smith. They planted Mark Rizzo’s body at his old home, along with Sarah Casey’s finger and the USB drive with the listening device. To do all this, they have to be somewhere in the area. Southern Connecticut is about two, two and a half hours away.’

‘And you think they’ve got, what, some little cottage somewhere near that transmission corridor?’

‘No, I think they live underground.’

Sergey glared at her, his eyes dry and bloodshot. Casey’s gaze had narrowed.

‘The tracking chip in my arm,’ Darby said. ‘Could you get a signal if I was somewhere underground?’

‘Depends on a number of factors. How deep you are, if the walls are shielded.’

‘Anything new on Taylor or Sarah Casey’s signal?’

‘Still quiet.’

‘So maybe you can’t track them because they’re somewhere underground.’

‘Or maybe this group discovered the tracking chips and removed them.’

‘Where were they installed? Left-upper arm?’

Sergey nodded.

‘I think they’re still in there,’ Darby said. ‘On the video, I looked at their arms and didn’t see any type of lacerations that would indicate the tracking units had been removed. Another thing I noticed were the walls. They’re made of uneven stone. Boulders and rocks, all shapes and sizes. The kind you find in the ground. Common rock, in other words. And the walls in both rooms, the stones were smooth, not shiny. No dampness.’

‘I’m not following you.’

‘Water, even a small amount, if it gets into a basement, what happens?’

‘You get mould.’

‘Exactly. Basements are sealed tight with OPC – Portland cement. It’s made primarily of concrete, mortar and stucco. Seals in any type of moisture. You’ve got blood in a basement, you’re going to get mould. The walls in the video had cracks and fissures in the mortar. Perfect places for moisture to come through, but the stones were dry. That means another type of mortar was used.’

Casey said, ‘Lime.’

Darby nodded. ‘Lime mortar was used in Ancient Rome and Greece. It wicks away any dampness from the wall and it evaporates. But if you get a lot of dampness, over time, it creates an irregular, almost mottled appearance – what’s called “limewash”. You find it in old cellars in England but not here in the States. Taylor and Sarah Casey are locked inside the basement of some old building.’

Sergey said, ‘That happens to be sitting in the woods.’

‘We might find the remnants of, say, an old church, but I doubt it,’ she said. ‘This place is hidden. It has to be. The people I met at the blast site? The ones I saw crawling around the crater and the thing I tied to the tree, the one missing its tongue? You think they’re living in a suburban neighbourhood? Going to the grocery store and the movies?’

Sergey pulled out his chair and sat, casting a weary glance at Casey.

‘And then consider what they did to Mark Rizzo,’ she said. ‘Those puncture wounds on his back – he was tortured first.’

‘Using what?’

Darby showed him empty hands. ‘Don’t know. But Ellis completed his autopsy, so I can tell you at least this much. Rizzo’s stomach was infested with spiders – the smaller ones. Ellis found at least two dozen, each one of them poisonous.’

Sergey blanched. ‘How … How is that even possible?’

‘Mark Rizzo had multiple abrasions and cuts on the back of his mouth and throat. My guess is that they shoved a tube down his throat. That’s the only way the spiders could have entered the man’s stomach.’

Casey showed no reaction. Sergey, swallowing, looking like he was trying hard not to vomit.

‘My point is,’ she said, ‘if they tortured Rizzo first, what better place to do it in than some underground cavern or basement located in the woods, where they didn’t have to worry about anyone hearing them? I’ll guarantee you something else. Wherever this place is, they buried the bodies not far from it.’

‘What bodies?’

‘This group has been collecting kids. Either they’re killed or they die naturally. You’ve got to dispose of the bodies someplace. What better place to do it than a mass grave site surrounded by miles and miles of woods?’

‘So you want me to fly to Connecticut based on a bee sighting.’

‘A rare bee,’ she said. ‘One that’s believed to be extinct.’

‘Agreed, but that bee could’ve just as likely come from someplace else – someplace closer to Boston. You heard Wright. He said one was sighted here in Needham.’

‘Back in ’27.’

Sergey looked at Casey and said, ‘I’m leery of flying out to Connecticut now. I want to see what develops here with the radio frequency. I talked with our tech guys onboard, and they said we don’t have the tracking equipment we need. So I called the Boston office. Their tech department does, so I sent the USB drive over there.’

‘How long?’ Darby asked.

‘It’s going to take some time.’

‘We need to go to Connecticut.’

Sergey rubbed his face.

‘Okay,’ he said, through his fingers. ‘Okay, let’s say these people have some underground place where they’re hiding. That Taylor and Sarah Casey are there. We take off right now for Connecticut and then drive to the woods, it’s still going to be dark. How do you suggest we search the woods?’

‘Call your Connecticut field office and ask them to get us a helicopter with thermal-imaging equipment that can penetrate the ground.’

‘And if they hear a helicopter, panic and decide to cut their losses and start shooting?’

‘It’s a risk. I realize that. But the circumstances don’t change whether we leave now or in the morning.’

‘And if something happens here –’

‘You have people – trained people – who can handle the situation,’ Darby said. ‘If something happens while we’re in the air, we can always turn around. But if there’s a chance that Sarah or Taylor Casey or any other victim is somewhere out there in those woods, we need to act on it. Now.’

Sergey drummed his fingers against the pad of paper.

Casey, stoic through the whole discussion, cleared his throat.

‘I agree with Darby,’ he said, sounding surprisingly calm. ‘We need to go.’

Finally, Sergey stood and called the pilot. Casey kept his gaze focused on the table, his face a waxy pallor under the bright lights.