“I wondered if I heard water flowing the first time I came out here. Thought I heard it and didn’t check.”
Marquez shone his light around the cages and back at the bear.
It didn’t react at all to the light. Blind, or too long in the darkness, possibly. He moved the light from cage to cage, talking to the bear as it growled, trying impossibly to reassure it. The other cages were in varying states of cleanliness; a couple looked like they’d held bears until recently, and that told him they’d probably find more carcasses.
He moved on with Kendall. He would come back to the bear and would call after they’d checked the barn. They would get the bear out of here right away. His flashlight beam came to rest on a weird contraption that looked like a shower stall with strips of dangling plastic where the door ought to be.
“What the hell is that?” Kendall asked.
Marquez moved to it, saw that the strips of plastic were the same as in a supermarket to keep the cold in. When he moved the plastic and looked inside, he understood.
“A drying station for meat, for gallbladders.”
“You’re an encyclopedia for this shit.”
There were a couple of gallbladders hanging, suspended in fine mesh bags, could be to keep the flies off them. The bear growled, and Marquez swung the light and saw tire tracks in the mud and a stack of deer hides and more pelts nailed to the wall along with dozens of antlers.
“Don’t step anywhere near those tire tracks,” Kendall said, and Marquez turned his flashlight on a line of mounted bears all in different poses on wooden pedestals, counted five stuffed, mounted black bears, and moved the light on.
“It could be Petroni was part of this,” Kendall said.
“That’s not Stella’s blood in the backseat.”
“You don’t know whose it is.”
Kendall’s light searched the soft soil of the barn floor, and Marquez knew he was looking for a grave. Marquez did the same thing himself as he moved through the barn to the back where the caged bear was. He shone the light on the other cages, brought it back to the growling bear again, saw the tube running from its abdomen, the poor quality of the undercoat, and wondered if they’d be able to save it.
“We’re going to get you out of here,” he said, and heard Kendall walking over.
“I’ve smelled some rough things in my life,” Kendall said. “I don’t see anything, but I’ll get better lights. We’ll take one walk through and then back out.”
“That carcass in the orchard was a bear in a cage that got dragged out there. You’ll want to take castings of those tire tracks as well.”
“Dragged from here?”
“Yeah, then released, and the bear would have gone for the creek, the water and cover there. Must have been frightened and sick. It was shot as it started down the bank.”
They heard the hoarse rattle of an old freezer compressor kicking on and spotted its pale white reflection at the very back of the barn. They’d walked past it the first time, too caught up in the drying station.
“Let’s check it,” Marquez said.
“What are bile products used for?”
“High blood pressure, coughs, gallstones, asthma. It’s a cureall.
That bear in the orchard was killed as recently as yesterday, could have been after Nyland was released.”
“Nyland got released and disappeared with Sophie,” Kendall said. “Then she starts talking to us last night, and before that she tells you this Durham sleeps at some rundown farmhouse.”
“She didn’t say ‘farmhouse.’” When Kendall stopped talking abruptly, Marquez said, “Finish the thought. Where do you see Petroni in this?”
“I don’t see a happy ending.”
“You think he’s here somewhere.” If they didn’t find him in here, the search of the grounds would widen. Dogs would be brought in. “The plywood cover on the well should come off.”
The freezer was big enough to hold just about anything and that was reason enough for silence. It had an ancient lock latch, and Kendall wanted to be the one to open it. He grunted as he lifted the heavy door and Marquez shone his light inside. A black bear’s head looked back up at them, a webwork of ice crystals filling its open mouth, its eyes iced grape skins dully reflecting the light. Kendall let the top rest against the back wall, and they removed twenty-two frozen paws.
“At least there are no human body parts,” Kendall said. “At least not that, but it looks like we found the headquarters you’ve been after.”
They swept the barn with light again as they walked back. Kendall squinted in the sunlight as they came outside, and Marquez said, “There’s an old well that needs to get looked at.”
“Okay, show me.”
40
They slowly dug the stakes out,no one saying much, and with a county deputy and Shauf on one side and Marquez and Kendall on the other, they lifted away the heavy plywood cover. Two sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood screwed together formed the cap, and as they lifted it away Marquez saw that fresh concrete had been poured around the rim to bed the plywood.
It had formed a kind of seal that was broken now, and the odor flowing up from the well was horrific. He caught a finger where a screw poked through the plywood, and his blood dripped on the weeds as they maneuvered the cap over and put it down.
The odor, the release of gasses was gagging, and they fell back, had to give the well a few minutes to vent, Kendall going to his car to get something to dull the smell. Marquez covered his mouth, didn’t breath, leaned over with a flashlight. Near the bottom, roughly thirty feet down, was dark fur. He moved the beam along the fur, then straightened, stepped back, and watched Kendall take a look while thinking about what he’d just seen.
Then they shined both lights in, Marquez talking.
“Here.” Marquez moved the flashlight beam to a place where the hide met unevenly. “Looks like a bear hide but it’s been sewed together.”
Kendall turned to Hawse. “We’ll need a backhoe.” To Marquez, “How deep would you guess?”
“Thirty feet.”
Kendall turned back to Hawse. “Tell the operator we need to get down at least twenty feet, maybe more. No, at twenty we can lower someone. Tell the operator we need a deep trench. He’ll know what to bring.”
“Might be easier to lower someone,” Hawse said, and Marquez stepped away from their debate. He saw Bell working his way through the officers on the driveway, Bell handing over a card rather than showing a badge. Marquez raised a hand so Bell knew where he was. Three TV vans were parked out on Howell, and Bell had waded through volleys of questions from the media but didn’t seem displeased about it. Marquez showed him the well, the carcass in the orchard, looked in the barn with him while they waited for a backhoe.
When the backhoe operator fired up his machine, diesel smoke plumed into the cool air, a curling black cloud rising against the white sky. The teeth of the hoe pulled at the concrete rim, lifted one edge, flipped and dragged it away from the well. It looked like a concrete donut lying there. The hoe repositioned and began to dig a trough, the bucket arm unfolding, teeth chattering as they scraped over stones. A pile of earth and loose rocks built alongside the backhoe, and a trench formed and deepened.
The operator worked steadily without looking long at any of those watching. Kendall stood with his hands on his hips, his eyes periodically surveying the overall scene, directing the work like a construction superintendent, while Marquez walked back out into the orchard and then looked in the house, the one bedroom painted, carpeted, much cleaner than the rest of the place. There was a dresser but no belongings in the drawers.