Name of the Devil Page 20

  His house is small compared with the size of the yard. Uncluttered, it’s almost too compulsively neat. Of course, I’m the one that uses the floor of my closet as a laundry basket.

  There’s a living room dominated by a flat-screen television and a brown leather couch. The kitchen looks like it was used for breakfast and little else.

  A plastic sheet still covers the bed where Deland’s body was discovered by Conner. The bedroom is just as sparse as the rest of the house. I’ll attribute the tidiness to Deland’s fastidiousness, but my gut tells me someone went through here and cleaned out a few things. There’s not even a laptop to be found.

  That’s peculiar to me. I’m not sure what kind of avionics expert doesn’t need a computer.

  Conner didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would steal from the dead. There’s also the paramedics and cops on the scene to consider. It’s a horrible thing to accuse your peers of, but it happens far more often than we want to admit.

  The top drawer of his dresser holds a row of watches that each cost more than my car. I assume the investigators decided there wasn’t anything suspicious about the lack of a computer because anyone wanting to rob Deland would have taken the watches. If he’d been killed violently, then that would be a different matter. But opening a criminal investigation every time you notice an apparent suicide victim is missing something is impractical. It’s common for people spiraling down to give things away. If they’re in a financial crisis, they hawk them.

  As far as I’m concerned, I’m now reasonably sure this could be a crime scene. I take a pair of gloves out of my field forensic backpack and slip them on before going any further.

  Out of curiosity, I reach behind the nightstand and feel two wall plugs attached to cords. One of them is an iPhone plug, the other a micro-USB.

  Deland’s phone, at least the one recovered by the police, was an iPhone. The other plug is for a different device. Could that device have been another phone—a throwaway that was removed from the scene along with the laptop?

  Killing someone via a drug overdose is an easy affair if the potential victim is already a drug user. If Deland knew his presumed murderer, all the killer had to do was spike a drink with a soluble amphetamine that would then make Deland less resistant to an injectable amphetamine of a much higher dosage.

  A quick toxicology report, the kind the county does when no foul play was suspected, wouldn’t show the different amphetamines. Investigators would find what they were looking to find: drugs in the system. Case closed.

  If I can find more evidence, which can reopen the case, then I can lobby for a more precise test. Most counties keep blood and tissue samples on file for at least a year after death. Ideally, we’d look at the body before Deland’s sister claims it.

  The extra phone cord is informative, but not conclusive. I need something else.

  The rest of his house doesn’t reveal anything to me. I check the closets for special hiding spaces, but there’s only a locked safe in a fairly obvious location. It takes me three minutes to open it. Inside I find a stack of bills, mostly hundreds. Maybe twenty thousand dollars from my quick count. There’s nothing else. But then again, no good criminal would use that to store his dirty laundry.

  This is get-out-of-town-fast cash. Now there’s a thought.

  I take out the bills and have a closer look. They’re brand new and smell fresh. We need to check with his bank and see if he made a recent withdrawal. If he didn’t, then this may be a payoff. If he did, then he might have been nervous about something.

  I sit back and gaze around. The house feels like a realtor’s show house; I can’t find anything to provide some kind of record of who Deland was, or what happened to him.

  The money and the missing laptop and phone are suspicious. But if he’s just a standard crook, doing things like making custom police scanners for marijuana dealers, his death is not really an FBI matter, or anything even the locals would care about all that much.

  Back in the kitchen I take a final pass and notice some photographs on the side of the fridge. They’re of Deland on the beach and at bars with attractive women. My catty side notices that they do all look like strippers. Too tan, too much boob on display and heavy makeup hiding hard living.

  Underneath, almost hidden, is an older photograph of Deland in his Air Force uniform. He’s posing with a wrench in his hand. Behind him is an aircraft. Long, dark fuselage, no cockpit. It’s a drone.

  I haven’t got a copy of his service jacket yet. I didn’t realize Deland had been a drone technician in the Air Force.

  Interesting . . .

  I RETURN TO the living room to take a look at the backyard. As I walk across the carpet to the window, something catches my eye. The low sun is casting shadows across the shag, turning it into a tiny forest. It highlights four deep impressions next to the wall. Something heavy must have been there until quite recently.

  I glance around. None of the other furniture seems to match the dimensions of the carpet dents. This was taken from the house—and not that long ago.

  Kneeling on the floor, I stick a pen in the gap between the carpet and the wall and slide it from left to right. Something clicks against the plastic. I pull the object free and it lands on the carpet.

  It’s a dull blue rock, worn smooth. I squeeze it. Hard like quartz, this isn’t a drug like meth or crack.

  It’s the kind of stone you put in an aquarium.

  Deland had a fish tank.

  Someone took the fish tank out of here.

  That’s what the investigators didn’t see. A missing fish tank.

  This could have been where Dr. Moya’s psychoactive fish were kept.

  Through the curtains I see the sun dip behind Deland’s freestanding garage. I wonder what’s in there?

  Well lit, Deland’s garage is actually more like a machine shop. It has the same sense of order as his house. I can see the clear spaces on the floor where two tool chests must have sat, but they’ve been removed too. The center area of the shop is devoid of clutter. He’d been working on something here.

  The truck parked on the grass suggests that whoever took what was in here must have had to back up to the large door to get it out. They either forgot about, or didn’t bother, moving Deland’s truck back.

  What was he working on? It’s impossible for me to tell because of the missing tools. Whatever it was, it required the full space of the two-car garage. Maybe forensics can find something if they go over it with tweezers. A sample of mud took me to Tixato, and a phone call from Tixato brought me here. So who knows what’s waiting to be found.

  I do need to be wary of trying too hard to make Deland fit. The aquarium stone is interesting, but it’s not enough to link to anything here. The last thing I want is to get an FBI team out on a wild-goose chase. One blue rock is all I have; the missing laptop, phone and wild theory about a fish tank aren’t enough.

  I close the door to the garage back up. My best bet is to get the local police more interested in what Deland was up to. If they find something, then maybe I can persuade Ailes to stick his neck out and channel some more resources into uncovering the connection.

  As I’m about to lock the garage, I spot a crumpled drop cloth hidden behind the door and stop. My dad used to lay one out on the driveway when he wanted to paint a magic prop. I would often help him, fascinated by how the overspray formed an outline of whatever he was making. Boxes, circles, rabbits. It was like a giant after-the-fact blueprint—a kind of negative of whatever he was building.

  A blueprint . . .

  Deland’s project may be gone, but not all its traces.

  I take the drop cloth outside and unfold it across the driveway.

  As it unfurls, it reveals dozens of random paint marks outlining Deland’s different projects. One stands out more than the others: a large triangle.

  It’s shaped
like bat wings.

  It’s much larger than the shadow in the convenience store video frame from Reverend Groom’s 911 call. But it’s obviously from the same family.

  Besides housing exotic cave fish that may have sent the sheriff into a prolonged psychosis, Deland was using his military training to work on a drone. A large, demonic-looking drone.

  37

  I FURIOUSLY TAKE PHOTOS of the drop cloth, afraid the paint will somehow fade away like a print in a darkroom, and almost trip on a lawn sprinkler while running back to my car to shoot an email off to Ailes with the images. The mere suggestion that Deland might have been working on something that could be used by a drug cartel, particularly one with terror links, should be enough to justify a thorough search of the premises along with an extensive investigation into his activities.

  There’s a voicemail on my phone from a West Virginia number.

  “Miss Blackwood, I’m callin’ you so you can set the folks straight on what occurred.” This is a voice I remember vividly, Black Nick. By the roaring of the cars in the background, he called from a pay phone by a highway. “Ole’ Jessup came by my cabin, I reckon you know that cause uh the fire and all. He had the idea old Black Nick had somethin’ to do wit his troubles. He’s all out of sorts.

  “I prayed for him. I tried to get him to do the Lord’s Prayer too. He’d have none of it. Kept talking ’bout how the troublemaker had his soul no matter what. Said he was an avenging angel, doing right by God’s hands.

  “He chased me all the ways up to Lightnin’ Peak. That’s where you gonna find him if you bother looking. Not that there much to look at no more. He got what was due.

  “Now I suppose folks wanna talk to me. I ain’t having none of that. I done what I done and no man can say I didn’ try saving his soul. It wasn’t having no saving.

  “I’m going backwoods, back with the other folk who live in the deep parts. I said my piece. I hope you still got the bolt I gave you. There’s more dark out there. The troublemaker ain’t done with you.”

  I’ve had many strange phone calls in my life, but I’m pretty certain this will never be topped. Nick’s warning unsettles me.

  It takes me a moment to process everything before I call Knoll and tell him he should have the team handling the manhunt go to Lightning Peak.

  An hour later I’m back at Deland’s, persuading the local cops to seal his property as a crime scene, when Knoll calls me back. “They sent the chopper. The pilot spotted something.” His voice is matter-of-fact. He’d probably narrate a boxing match like an autopsy.

  “Jessup?”

  “We don’t know yet. Definitely a body, charred though. There was a storm last night and multiple flashes on the mountain.”

  “Jesus.” The image is . . . biblical.

  “How’d you know where to find him?”

  “I’ll send you the voicemail message. Our sheriff had an ‘altercation’ with our crazy Swede witch doctor.”

  “An altercation that involves lightning? Christ. I’ll let you know when we get a preliminary report. He called you?”

  “Yup.”

  “The crazy ones sure love you.”

  “Story of my life. Takes one to know one, I guess.” I say it with a half smile. “I think I got a lead on our sixth man.” I tell him what I’ve found at Deland’s house.

  “So the circle is complete?” replies a hopeful Knoll.

  “Hardly. We don’t have a motive nor any idea who the Tixato connection is.”

  “They’ll come up with one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If this briquette is the sheriff and Deland is the man who put the bodies in the trees and created the explosion, then I think they’re going to say the case is closed.”

  “But it isn’t. We don’t have proof Deland did it or know who killed him. We don’t know who is behind all this. This keeps getting bigger, not smaller. I mean, who wanted me dead in Tixato?”

  “You know they’re going to pin this on Deland if they can make a connection. You check his shoes for mud from Hawkton or Tixato?”

  I’d gone back and checked after getting off the phone with Ailes. “His shoe collection was small, intentionally sparse. I used a roll of tape to grab some carpet samples from the truck and closet. I left enough for a proper forensic exam.”

  “Gut feeling?”

  “He was in both places at one time or another.”

  “They’re going to pin this on him.”

  “Who? Agent Mitchum?”

  “Her, everyone. It’s easier to close the books when everyone is dead.”

  My blood is beginning to rise. “What about X-20? How do they figure in on this?”

  “What will Mitchum go for? She’ll admit he worked for them, maybe. When you came snooping around someone made the connection. Even if we find out Deland was killed, it’ll be just another gang-on-gang crime. Drug-related murders don’t count like real ones, as far as the public is concerned.”

  “That’s bullshit. I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

  “It’s not my case. Mitchum and the Bureau want closure on this. The longer it’s open, the more expensive it gets and other things don’t get done. Despite their obstruction, you brought them all the pieces they need to make a circular case.”

  “There’s no motive for Deland!” I protest.

  “He’s a bad guy. They do bad things. I’m just preparing you for what I see coming. This whole case is totally out there. It’s too much to wrap our heads around. They’re going to go with Occam’s razor and apply the simplest explanation.”

  “Occam’s razor doesn’t say anything about excluding facts! They can’t really be going this way?” I know Knoll is trying to just be straight with me, but I can’t help taking it out on him.

  “I’m afraid so. That’s my gut. Ailes will tell you the same.”

  My elation over finding Deland is crushed by the prospect that all Mitchum wants is a person to pin this on. I may hate her after all.

  To her, the question of who put the transmitter in Groom’s studio, who wanted me dead in Tixato, of what really happened the night Marty Rodriguez died, are details she’s going to ignore because the facts are too weird.

  MAX CALLS ME on my drive back to Quantico. “I’ve got a list for you,” he says eagerly.

  “How long?” I try not to let my sour mood show.

  “Sixty names.”

  “That’s not bad.” Thank God someone is taking this seriously. God bless Max.

  “I’ve also pulled up a list of events and conferences going on in that area at the same time.”

  “How’d you do that?” I ask, impressed.

  “Internet.”

  “In 1985?”

  “The Internet, not the web. The Internet is the thing that connects it all. That was around a long time before.”

  “Yeah, of course. Was it a Listserv?” I dig up a term from a college class on computing.

  He lets out a small laugh. “Yeah. Old message boards for swingers.”

  “Pardon me?” I take my eyes off the road for a second to stare at my phone on the dashboard.

  “People back then, before Tinder, Grindr and Craigslist, would put announcements on online message boards about where to hook up. Got an insurance convention at the Hilton in Raleigh? Somewhere, someone is going to post something to a board suggesting a rendezvous. I found a bulletin board system that still had listings in that area. Maybe there’s something helpful.”

  “Thank you, Max.”

  “You sound down. Everything okay? You don’t have to do the dinner thing. I was just . . .”

  “Max, that’s still on. I need some sense of normalcy.” Just the thought of passing an hour talking to someone who doesn’t spend their time staring at dead bodies, or carry around a pair of handcuffs profe
ssionally comes as a relief.

  “Normal? Me? Your world must be something strange.”

  “You have no idea.”

  38

  THERE’S A STORY one of my favorite high school teachers loved to tell about selective blindness. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it makes an interesting point. When Spanish ships first appeared off the shores of the Americas, some of the Indians couldn’t see them. The ships were anchored right there in the bay, but the tall-masted vessels were so utterly foreign that they simply couldn’t acknowledge them.

  In a modern culture, where every commercial break is filled with visual computer animations of alien attacks and mythical creatures that assume you already understand a dozen bizarre concepts, the notion of pretending something isn’t there because it defies explanation seems almost laughable.

  Yet, every day, science reveals things that were right in front of us: bacteria actually cause ulcers, animals can indeed sense earthquakes, your house cat may be infecting you with a virus that makes you hoard things, including more cats.

  The events in Hawkton are like this in some way. Because we couldn’t see what was there, because we had to fit it into what we understood. At first it was an accident. A little bit of investigation revealed it was a murder with someone else possibly involved. Maybe there was a tinge of conspiracy, but nothing that went beyond small-town politics.

  This is the explanation that conveniently fits the facts. It’s the explanation investigators cling to because they prefer it over others being put forth by people who see the fantastical in every dark corner, who believe Satan walks among us. But their prejudice has forced them to choose an explanation that’s also at odds with reality.

  The middle ground isn’t clearly marked. There’s no map for me. I know there’s something more here than what my colleagues want to acknowledge. I also know the supernatural explanation just isn’t rational. To accept that would be to give up on the very notion of intelligent query. I can’t fault someone who chooses to believe the dinosaurs lived alongside the Egyptians. But I can’t tell them with a straight face that they’re thinking like an adult. It’s a childish worldview to choose what to believe and what not to in the face of the evidence. Playing peekaboo with the facts doesn’t make them disappear.