Hot Lights, Cold Steel Read online

  Problem was, they were half a mile away. Maybe more. The direct route would take him through a field. Recently plowed and prepped for planting. Probably cotton.

  Head down, Alejandro trudged across the field. The soft, damp earth clung to his feet, but he made good progress. He just might make it. He stepped on a baseball-sized rock. His ankle twisted, and he tumbled into one of the shallow furrows.

  The world dimmed.

  Oh, Jesus.

  CHAPTER 47

  SUNDAY 5:49 A.M.

  OUTRAGE AND DISBELIEF BALLED IN DR. ROBERT KINCAID’S THROAT. Incompetence. Lack of attention to detail. Pure stupidity. These always ramped up his blood pressure and drove him into a frenzy. Add to that a healthy dose of fear. Fear that this project could be exposed, that all his plans, the product of his genius, could be destroyed. His rage reached the boiling point. His hands shook, and he felt heat gather in his face as he looked at the body of Phil Dunlap. The deep gash in Dunlap’s throat and the bloodstains that haloed his head and reached out in long fingerlike streaks across the floor only fanned his fury.

  Kincaid turned to Darlene Montag, her pale face radiating her own fear. “How could you let this happen?” he said through clenched teeth.

  “It was—”

  “What? An incredible act of stupidity?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Shut up.” Kincaid turned to Harmon Talbert. “We could be seriously screwed on this.” He then looked at Karl Reinhardt. “Your guys fucked up big-time.”

  Reinhardt shook his head. “Wasn’t my men. It was your nurse who screwed up.”

  “Really?” Kincaid stepped close to him. “Who’s that lying on the floor with his throat ripped open? Isn’t he one of yours?”

  The muscles in Reinhardt’s jaw pulsed. “Your nurse’s incompetence set up the ambush.”

  “This is fucking insane.” Kincaid paced back and forth. “Where’s Rocco’s men?”

  “Right here.”

  Kincaid turned as Austin and Lefty came into the room.

  “Broke out a window,” Austin said. “The head. Down the hall. Crawled out, jumped the fence.”

  “Goddamn it,” Kincaid said.

  “Dropped this,” Lefty said, holding up Phil Dunlap’s gun. “So he’s unarmed and on the run.”

  “Until he flags down a car or gets to a phone,” Talbert said.

  “Not much around here on a Sunday morning,” Austin said. “Everything’s closed. He’ll have to cover a mile or more before he reaches a street with traffic. And he’s bleeding like a son of a bitch. The fence was painted with blood.”

  “What are you going to do?” Reinhardt asked.

  “As soon as you guys stop whining and bitching,” Austin said, “me and Lefty’ll track him down and kill him.”

  “Get going, then,” Reinhardt said. “He can’t get away.”

  Austin smirked. “Yes, boss.”

  Austin headed toward the door, but Kincaid grabbed his arm. “A word first.”

  Kincaid exited the room and moved down the hallway, Austin and Lefty following. He stopped and turned to them. “We’re going to shut things down for a while. A few months, anyway. In case Alejandro has a chance to talk.”

  “Of course they do have the bodies of the two girls,” Lefty said. “If they get Alejandro that’ll make three.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Kincaid said. “The girls can’t be connected back here. Alejandro can. If he does lead the authorities here, I want no hard evidence around. It’ll be our word against his.”

  “What about the others?” Lefty asked. “Alejandro could give them all the burial sites.”

  Kincaid hadn’t considered that. What a fucking disaster.

  “He’s the only one who knows there are other bodies,” Austin said.

  “Then you damn well better make sure he doesn’t talk.”

  “He won’t,” Austin said. “We’ll find him.”

  Kincaid wished he could believe that. The truth was he detested Austin and Lefty. Rocco Scarcella, too, for that matter. They were crude. Thugs. Not the kind of people he associated with. Right now he wished he’d never met them. But he couldn’t undo what was done. Not yet, anyway. “Still, we’ll clean things up here. Just in case.” He glanced down the hall toward the ICU doors.

  “Anything else?” Austin asked.

  “Darlene,” Kincaid said. “She’s no longer reliable.”

  “Want us to fix it?” Austin said.

  Kincaid nodded.

  “It’ll cost you.”

  “Everything costs,” Kincaid said. “Just fix it.”

  “Carmelita?”

  “She’s served her purpose.”

  Austin shrugged and headed back toward the room.

  Kincaid stopped him. “Not here.”

  “Why not? I got a minute.”

  Kincaid shook his head. “Later. Maybe at her home. Make it look like an accident.”

  “That takes time to set up. Time we don’t have. We got a man on the run. Besides, we already got Dunlap’s body to dump. A couple more won’t make much difference.”

  Kincaid mulled it over. It did make sense. On some level, anyway. Maybe not light-of-day sense, but here in this dark hallway and in this even darker situation, he could see that Austin’s solution might be the only solution.

  Before he could say anything, Austin continued down the hall. He pulled something from his pocket and let his arm fall casually to his side. Kincaid saw Austin had a black-handled switchblade cupped in his hand. He flicked it open as he pushed through the door to the ICU.

  Kincaid walked to the window and watched. Without hesitation Austin closed in on Darlene, and though she retreated and raised her hands for protection, she never had a chance. Kincaid jerked away from the window when Austin drove the blade into the pit of her gut, grinding it upward into her heart. Darlene collapsed against the knife, and Austin lowered her to the floor, her final few heartbeats pumping blood over his hand. Austin grabbed a towel off the tray table and wiped her blood from his hand and the knife. He dropped the bloody towel over Darlene’s face, folded the knife, and slipped it into his pocket.

  Lefty moved to Carmelita’s bedside. He disengaged the ventilator from the ET tube in her throat. An alarm sounded. He and Austin stepped into the hall.

  Kincaid felt as if the air had been sucked from the building. He couldn’t breathe. Acid rose into his throat, followed by a wave of dizziness. He grabbed the window frame for support.

  “That should take care of it.” Austin smiled and clapped a hand on Kincaid’s shoulder. “What’s the matter, Doc? You look a little pale. Can’t stand the sight of blood?” He laughed, brushed past him, and he and Lefty started walking away. He shot over his shoulder, “You clean that shit up and wrap all the bodies. We’ll deal with them later. Right now, we got to catch a rabbit.”

  CHAPTER 48

  SUNDAY 6:14 A.M.

  THE SUN EASED ABOVE THE HORIZON AND THE EASTERN SKY GLOWED orange as Austin climbed behind the wheel of the SUV, Lefty riding shotgun. Exiting the parking lot, Austin turned on to the street and then into the open field that stretched alongside Talbert Biomedical’s long building. He stopped near where Alejandro had scaled the fence, and he and Lefty got out.

  “Lot of blood here,” Austin said.

  “He went that way,” Lefty said, pointing.

  The morning glow made the dark dribbles and drops of blood on the patchy grass and dry dirt appear more brown than red. The trail led across the field toward the street.

  “You follow it,” Austin said. “I’ll pull around.”

  Lefty walked off, head down, meandering slightly as he followed the blood trail. By the time he reached the road, Austin had jumped from the SUV and stood near its front bumper. The engine idled with a soft ticking sound.

  “This way,” Lefty said.

  They followed the few splotches of blood they could see for about a hundred feet, and then the trail played out.

  “M
ust’ve stopped bleeding,” Lefty said.

  “Or someone picked him up,” Austin said.

  Lefty nodded. “Or that.”

  “Fuck,” Austin said. “Let’s search the neighborhood. Might get lucky.”

  “We better. Rocco’s going to go off if we don’t find him.”

  Rocco did. An hour later when Austin and Lefty told him they had found nothing.

  They had zigzagged the streets, covering a dozen block area twice, and circled through the Cummings Research Park, but they found no sign of Alejandro. As if he had simply disappeared. They finally gave up and drove to Rocco’s house, finding him on the poolside deck, coffee and an empty breakfast plate on the table in front of him.

  “He didn’t just fucking disappear. Somebody picked him up.” Rocco slammed a fist down. His cup rattled against its saucer, and coffee sloshed onto the table. “First the bodies of the girls, then those two clowns looking for Alejandro. Not just a coincidence. They know something. Now Alejandro’s gone. If he turns up alive, we’re fucked. All of us.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Lefty asked.

  “Find him,” Rocco said. “Kill him. I’ll get my ear to the ground.

  See if the police or hospitals have anything.”

  “Kincaid’s shutting everything down,” Lefty said. “Just in case. You want us to set up things over on Pratt?”

  Rocco stuck a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. “Yeah. Let’s clean the slate. Tie a bow on this shit. It’s been a good run, but Kincaid’s right. Time to wind down. We can crank it up again in a few months. After the police solve the case.”

  “We’ll get on it,” Lefty said.

  “I’ll give our friend at HPD a heads-up. Let him know we’re about to wrap up the case for him.” Rocco laughed. “He’ll love it. Make him a fucking hero.” He snatched the toothpick from his mouth and wheezed out a wet cough. “This’ll get him where he wants to be. Where he can be even more useful to us.” He settled the toothpick back into the corner of his mouth.

  “Walker and Tortelli?” Austin asked.

  “Once the killer’s found, they’ll have no one to look for.”

  “And if not?”

  “We’ll drop the hammer on them.”

  Lefty nodded. “I like the way you think, boss.”

  CHAPTER 49

  SUNDAY 7:10 A.M.

  T-TOMMY AND I WAITED BENEATH A HICKORY TREE NEAR A GRAVEL road that cut through the small rural cemetery. The sky was blue, with only a few cottony clouds, and the sun was just beginning to burnish the treetops of the adjacent wooded area where Noel and Crystal had been buried.

  Last night after we left Alejandro’s place, T-Tommy had put out a BOLO on Alejandro Diaz and Carmelita Hidalgo. He also arranged for Derrick Stone and a team of officers, as well as an excavation crew and a tech from the coroner’s office, to meet us here. We had decided that even though Maple Hill Cemetery might be an easier place to search—just look for the freshest grave in the area indicated on Alejandro’s map—it would also attract the most attention. Not to mention a court order to open up a grave that, at least in part, belonged to someone else. The bet was that the garbagemen had taken advantage of any fresh graves that popped up and simply buried a corpse or two on top of the casket. Who would think to look there?

  We were now waiting for the cadaver dogs.

  We didn’t wait long.

  A battered blue pickup crunched down the gravel road toward us and stopped thirty feet away. Two dogs and a man jumped from the cab. A dingy orange T-shirt hung from his bony shoulders. Spidery, sun-leathered arms dangled from the sleeves. He wore a blue cap that read Tilton Kennels. It seemed a bit large and sat low on his head as if supported by his ears. The band was sweat stained. A few cockleburs clung to the frayed cuffs of his jeans and the loosely tied laces of his boots. The dress of a man who knew hard work.

  T-Tommy introduced me to Junior Tilton. His eyes were deep set and dark, and he looked me straight in the eye. His handshake was strong, and he smiled around the wad of chewing tobacco that pooched out his left cheek. The dogs sat at his side, no sound, no movement.

  “Junior raises dogs,” T-Tommy said. “Mostly hunting dogs. Spaniels, retrievers, beagles. These hounds are trained to sniff out cadavers.”

  Tilton launched a gob of tobacco juice to his left and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “You got bodies, Lucy and Frank’ll find ‘em.”

  T-Tommy unfolded the map we had found at Alejandro’s. He pointed to it as he spoke. “If these are correct and mean what me and Dub think they mean, there are seven bodies out here. Two here and here. And three here.”

  Another wad of brown spittle and Tilton said, “Let’s get at it.”

  Two of the deputies retrieved shovels from the trunk of one of the patrol cars, and we all followed Tilton and his dogs across the narrow open area and into the trees. Tilton gave a sharp three-note whistle through his teeth, and the dogs jumped into action. They rushed forward, heads low, sniffing whatever seemed interesting to them. A tree here, a rock there, but they soon locked on an area beneath a bright green sugar maple.

  As we drew close, I could see that the ground was slightly sunken. The dogs danced around the depression, moaning and yipping, even giving an occasional growl. Tilton let out another three-note whistle, and Lucy and Frank backed away and sat, fidgeting a bit, but not moving.

  The digging took a good twenty minutes before Stone, standing by the hole, said, “Got something.”

  A torn piece of plastic jutted from the dark, damp soil. As the deputies cleared away more dirt, two wrapped bodies appeared. Once the plastic was cut through, two corpses were revealed. One male, one female. Though seriously decayed, I noticed several wounds with metallic clips on the belly of each.

  I glanced at T-Tommy.

  “I hate it when we’re right,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  T-Tommy called Coroner Dreyer, told him what we had found, gave him the location, and said there were likely a dozen other sites. He requested that Dreyer contact Drummond and Cooksey and mobilize the crime scene unit. He also said that a couple of extra coroner’s techs and excavators would be helpful. T-Tommy closed the phone and looked at me. “This is going to be ugly.”

  “I know. I did the math. If these maps are correct, we’re looking at twenty-two bodies. Not counting Noel and Crystal.”

  T-Tommy forked back his hair. “The media will have a fucking field day.”

  “I’ll call Claire,” I said. “Let her get out in front of the story before all the wild speculation begins.”

  CHAPTER 50

  SUNDAY 12:10 P.M.

  THE TENNESSEE RIVER SAGGED INTO NORTH ALABAMA LIKE A slack guitar string, waiting to be tightened to the proper key. From its origins at the confluence of the Holston and French Broad Rivers near Knoxville, Tennessee, until it emptied into the Ohio River near Paducah, Kentucky, it covered over six hundred and fifty miles. The river was home to nine Tennessee Valley Authority hydroelectric dams, which supplied power to a large chunk of the southeast. The city of Huntsville, as well as the Redstone Arsenal/Marshall Space Flight Center, nestled against the river near the bottom of its Alabama swag.

  Like most Southern cities, Huntsville was small. Though the population was around one hundred and sixty thousand and it was spread over one hundred and seventy-five square miles, you could drive fifteen minutes in any direction and be lost in rural America. No city lights. No traffic. Just fertile farmland where rabbits, squirrels, doves, and crows abounded. Land where cotton was king for so many years. Still was, though it had been joined by corn and soybeans and a handful of other food crops.

  I stood at the back of my property and looked out over the city, the Redstone Arsenal, and the rolling green hills and thick patches of forest that surrounded both. The cloudless blue sky, the gentle breeze from the west, and the pink and white dogwoods that bloomed along the edge of my property offered no hint of the horrors that lay in those hills and fo
rest patches. None of the people driving unhurriedly along Memorial Parkway could have guessed that at this very moment excavation crews were pulling body after body from the ground. Before sunset they would know, but right now life went on as if this were just another perfect April day.

  Earlier, after we had uncovered the first two bodies, I cleared out. T-Tommy said that Furyk was going to swoop in, and it might be best if I made myself scarce. Good idea. He’d said he’d meet me here later.

  I came home and went for a long run on Monte Sano Boulevard, a tree-shaded two-lane road that followed the spine of Monte Sano Mountain and stretched between Governors Drive to the south and the Bankhead Parkway to the north. I then hit the weights for an hour. I have a small shed toward the back of my property that I turned into a gym of sorts, complete with a treadmill, a stair-climber, a multistation weight apparatus, and a killer sound system. I pumped iron to the sounds of Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, and Big Bill Broonzy.

  The work and sweat felt good, but I couldn’t shake off the images of Noel and Crystal and the young couple we had found this morning. Jill intruded a few times, too.

  I sat at the table on the patio, and for the dozenth time read through all the information we had accumulated. Norton and Kramden showed up and harassed me for a while. I gave them some corn, they fought over it, and then, apparently bored with what I was doing, they took to the sky and disappeared across the valley.

  I scanned my scribbled case notes, anemic on useful information, mostly questions. They were in no particular order, written as I thought of them.

  Multiple surgeries over several days.

  Medical skills. Type? How/where learned?

  Special equipment required. Source?

  Bodies disposed by punk—not the killer.